I have been waiting for this function for years, I have many duplicates created over the years from old backups and re-installs where the os crashed so badly and in the past you couldn’t easily sync your photos like you can now do duplicate albums were easy to create when you were forced to move an album from one drive to another because the hard disks were so small and the albums so big.
I just upgraded to Ventura yesterday and the people portion keeps saying: 0 photos scanned--46611 remaining. The duplicates say: "Finding Duplicates. Scanning will continue when you're not using the app." I know it takes a while, but what exactly does it mean when I'm "not using the app"? Is it "quit" out and closed down completely or is it open and minimized in the dock or in the background while I'm using another app? Also, how long do you think it will take for this scanning of people and mostly duplicates to start and more importantly finish? Thank you. Your videos are really helpful!
great tutorial great new feature in photos app I have photos of my art work some large files some small files and some with different extensions but all of the same photo so I want to keep a separate file for each cause some times I just need a small thumb nail of my art or large files for my print on demand service which only accept a certain size so I have many types of files of my art, know I can immediately compare these photos and their file and extensions with out having to guess if I'm accidentally deleting photos that I went out of my way to make,😁 thanks photo app and thanks macmosts guy for sharing
Tank you, my duplicates didn't show up. I have 10's of thousands of photos... they're just not showing up yet. Thank you!!! I'll give it some time to update.
Update: FWIW 331 duplicates showed up 1 day later. After merging the duplicates the option disappeared. Apparently it doesn’t show up on the menu UNLESS there are duplicates.
If you have say a new Mac but an iPhone 7, and you delete duplicates on the Mac, will the duplicate photos be removed from the iOS15 iPhone too? Assuming it’s the case but I’ve seen iCloud photos have a mind of its own on different devices
Slightly unrelated, but still, another needed way to clean up the Recents album: will Apple EVER give us the option of removing a photo from Recents once I have put it into another album? I have THOUSANDS in Recents. Finding things would be SO much easier if I could remove the ones I’ve also saved elsewhere. Gary, if you have any influence, and you SHOULD, please suggest this option!
Don't use the special "Recents" for this. Just view "All Photos" in your library. I never use "recents" at all, only Library (All Photos) and Albums sometimes.
Thank you for the video . Super appreciated . I have been sync my iPhone picture with usb cable to my Mac for last 2 years while I’m actually using iCloud services .now . I noticed only yesterday sync with usb cable … it never copied all my iPhone ( with icloud ) picture to my Mac . Only partially some pictures . I activated last night finally on iPhoto , my Mac the iCloud feature to copy original pictures to my Mac ( still waiting for those missing pictures to be copied on my Mac hard drive ) . But since I noticed it made tons duplications on my iCloud pictures …..
I have a very old one on that (search and it comes right up) but the way I would recommend doing it today is to stick to the rule of one project = one library. Use iMovie libraries as iMovie "documents" so you can easily move them to another drive when you are done with them.
This is very useful, but I noticed I have a bunch of duplicates photos with 2 different dates. It looks like the merge function keeps the oldest one and delete the most recent one. Is it the expected behaviour? Thanks
A great video and a well needed feature. One question, . . . I have photos that aren't exact duplicates and I want to save both of them, but I want the duplicate algorithm to bypass this the next time it checks for duplicates. Is there a feature to do this?
Great video and I appreciate the explanation. I do have a question about duplicates. We just returned from a vacation in which we went to the mansions in Newport RI. We went to three mansion, all of those photos of the went into one album along with photos around town. I’ve decided to make three new albums, one for each mansion. Will the merge allow me to chose which album to remove duplicates duplicates from? I would like to keep my RI pictures around town in the original album separate from the mansions. Thank you!
So, do you have duplicates? Sounds like you just have one photo and have placed it in two albums. Those aren't duplicates. You only have the photo once. Albums are just different lists of photos that link to the originals in your library.
Hi Gary, I have a phone and tablet. I have never created albums. Many photos do not show up in chronological order, and even change by years. Do I need to create albums for all of my photos to get of the them into chronological order? If I have a bunch of photos with flowers and some also have people in them, does this application pick up the photos or the people? Thank you for your great videos
What view are you using when you see these photos out of order? Library > All Photos? Or something else? If you check the dates on the photos are they correct? I don't know what you are asking by "pick up the photos or the people?" What do you mean by that?
A great explanation Gary! Initially, after upgrading to iOS 16, the Duplicates album didn't appear. But a day or so later I now have a Duplicates album showing 322 duplicate photos (just as you explained). I'm going to test whether the Merge process preserves any album designations for photos allocated to albums (where one of the duplicates hadn't previously been allocated to an album, but was the one chosen as the best in the Merge process). This was also a question raised by LWH LWH here in the Comments. Thanks Gary - another topic expertly and succinctly demonstrated, as always! 👍⭐
@@PaulKrone-SaintLucia Hi Paul. Yes the album designation did work on the test I did. Sorry I didn't post back here about it. I allocated a photo having a small size (low resolution) to a Test album. Its duplicate was much larger in size (high resolution), but hadn't been allocated to that album. After merging, the larger sized photo was shown in the Test album, even though it wasn't originally allocated. The smaller sized photo no longer appeared in the Test album. Clearly, the better photo (with higher resolution and size) replaced the lower resolution photo in the album. Hope I've explained that clearly and that it helps you.
Gary, I make video's for a funeral home, sometimes families send big files and there are duplicates in the video. I have to physically go through and try to find them...Is there any way to search the pictures in the video without having to look manually. What I mean by video is there are many single pictures all put together to make a video, Any suggestions??
Updated on iPad and iPhone but in utilities on iPad it doesn’t have duplicates and I know I have lots of duplicates. Does this new update not apply to iPads? iPhone I only had 45 duplicates.
Wow man! What a thorough video on the subject at hand. Thank you Brother. Subscribed. Wonder if they’ll bring this valuable feature also to the iPad os16?
@@macmost Thank you for letting me know bro. I was hesitant to upgrade my m1 12.9 pro to the latest update. But now I have a good reason to do it. Just deleted or merged 2600 photos on my iPhone 13. As a photographer and designer this to me is one of the best features introduced with ios 16. Thanks again. Going to update my iPad software right away.
I found this very interesting. Glad to know iOS 16 has this ability. You did a great job taking a topic that can be confusing (especially mentioning the resolution factor difference) and clearly communicating the options and solutions. Keep up the great work!!!!
Thanks for the video. But I Still have a question: I have similar photos (not the same) that are shown in duplicates. And I want to keep all of them. Is there a way of removing them out of the duplicate folder? Thank you 😊
I have thousands (~7,000) of duplicates and don't have hours of time to merge each photo. Is there a way (or app) that can do all at once? Thanks for advice!!!!
Yes, but I recommend against it. If you don't have time now, just do a few. Then a few later. What's the rush? Otherwise, you can select multiple ones the way you select multiple things anywhere in macOS (Shift+click to select a range).
@@macmost Too late, I took your advice and downloaded the program you recommended. It only deleted 6,000 so I have another 1,000 to do by hand. Hopefully I have not screwed things up too much!
@@really9025 Program I recommended? I have never recommended another app for deleting duplicate photos in the Photos app. Not sure what you mean by that.
Thank you Gary as mentioned in the many comments, you do a great job in providing very clear instructions and your videos very easy to follow. I still have an iPhone 6s+ but will am reviewing my options for a new cell, I look forward to the release of Ventura when I can use this new feature to search & merge duplicates.
Thanks Gary for another great video! I have an iPhone X with duplicate Photos in the library but the photo feature “duplicate photos” doesn’t appear. Do you know why? Thanks.
If I have a photo in my library (I.e all photos), but the same photo is in a specific album, will it show up as a duplicate? If so, would the merge feature delete one of the photos?
No, that isn't a duplicate. Albums just link to the photo in the library. You aren't duplicating anything when you add a photo to an album. See th-cam.com/video/F5VnR4LY0pk/w-d-xo.html
I didn't know this existed until I watched the video, and I'd just imported maybe 100 GB of photos to Photos, thinking I'd found all the duplicates - IOS 16 found 450 duplicates. Using the merge function was a whole lot easier than manually going through the duplicates (in my case, AGAIN).
I like this thing but when I have tried it I have felt so "unsure" to click merge when I have more than two photos marked as duplicates. I never know what apple thinks is the better photo... is it the photo with bigger resolution or bigger file size or what.
Good question LWH LWH. I was thinking the same. It's something I'll have to test. Logically, it should preserve the album designation, given that it preserves the metadata and caption from each duplicate photo.
So there are duplicate(multiple) videos explaining this feature. Apparently someone hit the merge button and here is the higher quality video that remained. Finally this new feature is explained and now understood! Thanks!
You can select multiple ones the normal way you do in macOS. But I recommend against it. Your photos are valuable. Don't do it in bulk and make a mistake and lose a photo forever. Do a few here and a few there, over days, weeks, or months. You'll get there. Be patient, it is worth it.
No. And you don't want to. You don't want an automatic process that could delete one you want. Never worth it. Just review them a few here and a few there over time. No rush.
Hi Gary, this is really useful thanks. Does merge also preserve album assignments of both photos - e.g. if Photo 1 is in Album A and Photo 2 is in Album B, will it put the retained photo into the other album?
I do not have a duplicate photos showing in my drop menu under utilities on my iPad Pro but I do on my iPhone. I’m running the newest IOS and yes I have about 10,000 photos. HELP
Is there any way when I shuffle I can have different widgets and color for each photo while it still is on shuffle. Because when I do it right now it all the photos have the same widgets, font, and color.
I have an iPhone 12 Pro and i installed IOS16 the day it was released AND i know i have a couple hundred duplicates; however, I don’t even have the menu option for Duplicates in the Photos App. I think Apple has a bug in this feature.
In my Photos Library, I want to transfer many of these to a sub-album, i.e. Vacation, for instance. However, once stored in the designated album, the original still appears in the Photos Library, still cluttering that main Library. Is there a method to actually move the photo to an album for storage and reference, but have the photo no longer appear in the main Library? This is the reason to have an Album, so they no longer appear in the main Library. I want the photos organized in easy to locate Albums, not duplicated.
When you view the "Photos Library" it is a list of ALL of the photos in your photos library. So yes, it includes everything. You can't have something in an album that isn't in your library. These are not duplicates. They are just different ways of viewing your photos. The Library view is everything. Albums are collections you create. If you want to only view albums, then just view your albums and don't look in at the "Library" view. See th-cam.com/video/F5VnR4LY0pk/w-d-xo.html
@@macmost Thanks Mac. And yep, I realize they’re not considered duplicates for the reason you stated. Just wish I didn’t have the originals still in the Library making it difficult to locate photos I’ve not placed in an Album, if that makes sense. In the grand scheme of life, this remains a trivial matter but thought I’d ask. Thanks for the video!
@@BeckVMH You need to re-think "in the Library." Your Library is everything, by definition. If you want to see what is not in an album, create a Smart Album with "Album is not any" and you'll see everything not in an album.
I wonder if you can help me out here, I had all my music on a 256gb sd card by Transcend and it has finally given up the ghost, it is totally dead, I have been dropping dragging and updating my 10,000+ songs by artist from my SSD luckily I made a music backup folder but when I dropped and dragged it was a mess with a lot of ‘unknown’ even though the artist was there, anyway long story short how can I get my music that was on and in iTunes off of my iPhone 13 Pro Max to my Macbook Pro 16” 2021 without losing the music ? Do you have a safe recommendation of a third party app or know of a way to do it ? If not I will have to continue adding the artists and albums in batches to make sure everything is where it should be.. Could really do with your help… Thanks man Love, Purpose n Peace MCD
From your iPhone to your Mac? There's no good way. If you are using old-fashioned sync, then the sync goes Mac-to-iPhone, not the other way around. There are sketchy third-party apps that will do some of it, but it will be a mess. Going from your backup to your Mac is going to be better. Then for next time make sure you have a real backup (Time Machine, online, etc) for your files.
I’m operating on iOS 15.7 on an iphone SE. This feature doesn’t show up and I KNOW I have duplicates. Until I have space to upgrade I need to find another way 😭
Really helpful and so much more detailed than other explainers. But... while merge does remove the duplicate data (the new merged photos point to the same original file) it seems like it still leaves them -- disordered in my view -- visible in each of the folders in which they originally sat. i.e. PHOTO1 is still visible in ALBUM1 and PHOTO1-DUPLICATE is still visible in ALBUM2. The duplicate data is gone but the visual duplicate, is still there. This makes sense to users whose folders a well-organised things perhaps by topic, where one might be FAMILY PHOTOS and another might be PHOTOS 2022 and you want the picture of your parents in both. It's less ideal for those who *want* to remove one of the duplicates (not just the duplicate data) from all the folders but the chosen one (a result of years of messy importing practices from various devices/cameras before duplicate-detection existed). While choosing to delete (not merge) one of the duplicates does prevent this, there is no info showing in which folder each photo sits and thus which one you are deleting. Or am I somehow missing this? Seems pretty crucial. If that exists and someone knows how to find it, please let me know. Or maybe I should sit tight and hope that this will be added in an update?
This deals with duplicate photos in your library. The same photo in two albums is NOT a duplicate. There is just one photo, listed in two places. Albums are kind of like playlists in Music or Smart Folders in the Finder. They are just lists of photos from your library. When you merge two photos, it correctly keeps the photo in both albums as it should. Lots of people would be very upset if it did not. If your goal is to clean up your albums, then go into each album and remove photos you don't want to see there anymore. It is up to you how you use albums.
@@macmost Yes, I realise that. That's what I meant by 'visible' in different albums even if the *data* of the photo itself is not duplicated. Apologies if my terminology was not clear. The problem is that I don't want such photos visible ('listed') in several albums. I would like all the photos from japan 2010 to be in the 'japan 2015' album and the photos from london in 2020 to be in the 'london 2020' album and *not* also visible/listed in albums called things like 'photo import dump done in 2021ish' and 'did i import these already?' and 'photos pulled of an old phone many of which will have already been imported back when i used it', and so on. There are over a dozen such random albums made up entirely of massive photo dumps that -- as well as trying to eliminate duplicates -- I am trying to organise. For people who have been with Apple Photos or similar from Day 1, particularly if they mostly shoot on phones -- many users I'm sure -- then you are absolutely right. Their issue is only the duplicates, they don't have the album organisation issue. For users like me, who have been taking pictures since before the cloud or even digital photos were a thing, and who have switched between various kinds of Android, iPhone, SLRs, video cameras, wired and wireless export/import, etc, then it's not all in a neat, chronological Apple-organised stream. And given the number of photos involved -- many 000s -- it's not trivial to sort it out manually. So yes, it would be terrible for most users if it automatically removed the visibility/listing of the image in all but one album, but it need not do that. It could tell you in which album each duplicate photo sits and then you can chose to delete the one you don't want (typically in the 'wrong' album) or merge them. You already get lots of info from right-clicking an image in the duplicates list, down to the lens used, so it would be trivial for Apple to list the album it sits in too. In fact I think there is a 3rd party app, Power Photos, that does just that with duplicates it finds but I'm wary of using a 3rd party app that might damage the library. Anyway, maybe Apple will include this simple but useful info in future releases. Fingers crossed...
@@mobiledisco Keep in mind that when you add a photo to an album where it is already there, it is still going to be there just once. So in the case of your "Japan 2010" and "Japan 2015" albums, just go to the Japan 2010 album, select all, and move them into Japan 2015. Then delete the Japan 2010 album. In the case of "photo import dump done in 2021ish" maybe just delete that album completely.
I know there’s a separate folder for screenshots, but if a person takes a screenshot of a photo and crops it the same will that appear in duplicates with the photo you took the screenshot of?
There is an album (not a folder) for them yes. If you crop it, it will be cropped. You'd have to duplicate it first, then crop it. Not sure if it will appear as a duplicate then. Try it and see.
I have duplicates in my photo gallery on my iPhone. I did what you said, updated to 16.1.1 and the duplicate detection doesn't work. I still have hundreds of duplicate photos that don't have a trash can icon. So I can't even get rid of those one by one. You have any other suggestions?
@@macmost It's been 4 days and its only found 4 out of a few hundred duplicates. Didn't work for me, hope it worked for others. Also, these duplicates are pictures I can't trash. There is no trash symbol at the bottom of these duplicates.
@@sizzlemann Are you on an iPhone? iPad? Mac? Is an iPhone, are you perhaps not letting it charge at night? I don't think it works at this if the battery is in use and it is lower. But if you don't see a trash icon I wonder if these are photos manually synced to your iPhone instead of using iCloud Photos? Or maybe in a Shared album?
@@macmost these are photos on an iPhone. I don't use iCloud. Phone is fully charged at night and never gets below 50% at any time. I load my photos to my Macbook Pro now and then. But somehow they made duplicates of all the photos and put them into my iPhone. I can delete the original, but not the duplicate. I want to get rid of all the duplicates but not sure how to do that.
@@sizzlemann It really depends on why the duplicates are there and what you did to create them. I wouldn't want to advise you how to delete something so valuable without knowing more and seeing firsthand what the problem is. So perhaps work with an expert on that to have them look at what is going on.
I know this isn’t an iCloud shared library in ios 16, but I was just curious. My mom has her photos on her Mac stored on an external hard drive. Do you know if those photos will work with the iCloud shared library, or do they have to already be in the iCloud photo library?
Are they in iCloud Photo Library now? (You can have your iCloud Photo Library stored on an external drive, they aren't exclusive). If they are in iCloud now, they should be able to be in the new shared library feature when that is available.
@@macmost My mom’s photos are stored on photos library but on an external hard drive (not on her mac). She can only view them on her mac when she connects her external hard drive. She can not see those photos on her iPhone.
@@ethanmenzel I mean it is just a simple matter of photos not in iCloud Photos cannot use iCloud Photos features. Why not just turn on iCloud Photos for her then if that is what you want?
No, and you don't want it to. An "automatic" process may delete something you want to keep. First, figure out why you have so many duplicates if you don't already know (a mistaken import from a while back?) so it doesn't happen again. Then just take the time to go through some duplicates here and there when you have time.
I downloaded 16 on Monday however it took 2 days to run a duplicate service. I created 3 duplicates on Monday but the phone found different/old duplicate pics. It takes some time..
What I want (maybe it exists) is an easy way to intelligently sort all my millions of images over the years into accurate categories and folders with the ability to add rules for custom sorting, such as if you wanted sorting all screenshots taken on X date or it would know what a painting looks like or a sculpture or wood or metal or whatever and be able to show you all images with wood or metal, or both, to show you multiple categories at the same time like “show me screenshots of wood, metal, on X date”. Let’s say you have lots of screenshots from someone else, if you said show screenshots taken on X date it would only show screenshots you took (much easier since it would have data knowing you took a screenshot and would also know if you cropped it and you should be able to specify show I cropped images and cropped images and add screenshots and then it would sort by screenshots that were cropped, or with filter settings changes, or if you drew on it or whatever. You could have many detailed sorting options you could combine together and it just figures it out because it already knows how you modified the file so it’s just a matter of drawing from that information. So that’s searching but after you search you should be able to add it to a folder after you confirm you like the sorting criteria and then after then you could sent it to automatically add future images to that folder. Let’s say you have lots of folders and want to generall browse them like “recent” in “photos”. Oh no! All those folders are now unsorted, or you have to go browse each one. So that’s easy you just let people select what folders you want to see in that view. You could have an option to see images it’s not sure about and even have a slider to say how strong it’s criteria needs to put an image in a folder, like if you selected “wood” you could select how much wood is needed to be put in the wood folder. Or if you have an orange folder set it to 80% strength to need lots of orange, or it puts ALL images with any orange in it. Apple Pay me for ideas pls 😂
This same function is available on the iPad if you have iPadOS 16. Remember you need to wait a bit after updating for it to appear and it will only appear if you have any duplicates to find.
Sounds very convenient. But then the road to hell is paved with convenience. It’s getting a little creepy in a big brother sort of way having Apple constantly analyzing the content of our photos. I know they say they are the king of privacy. But it’s creepy.
@@macmost Apple makes the iPhone. In light of recent years I have no trust in the silicon valley tech companies who make their products in Communist China. They have no problem dealing with that totalitarian regime so I would not be surprised if they lied about privacy. Just my opinion.
@@cnyphotovideo Yes, but it isn't some Apple server doing the work, in some building somewhere. That is what privacy advocates are usually concerned about: your photos available to others during the process. So this happens on the tool in your possession. Not sure how any feature like this could exist otherwise. Or anything at all on your iPhone. Apple makes the software (iOS) that is doing the work in the USA. And the parts come from all over the world. The chips in the iPhone, at least the CPU, is actually produced in Taiwan, not mainland China. Others come from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and the USA. Assembly in China, but also some in Brazil and maybe India.
I have been waiting for this function for years, I have many duplicates created over the years from old backups and re-installs where the os crashed so badly and in the past you couldn’t easily sync your photos like you can now do duplicate albums were easy to create when you were forced to move an album from one drive to another because the hard disks were so small and the albums so big.
Same here I spends months doing that function manually it is so hard , i have many duplicate from 15 years ago untill now😂
Same here!!!
Ditto ! 👍🏼
Man , soooo many years of odd self-replicating photo incidents and we now finally have something that’s built-in to fight this problem. 👍🏼
I just upgraded to Ventura yesterday and the people portion keeps saying: 0 photos scanned--46611 remaining. The duplicates say: "Finding Duplicates. Scanning will continue when you're not using the app." I know it takes a while, but what exactly does it mean when I'm "not using the app"? Is it "quit" out and closed down completely or is it open and minimized in the dock or in the background while I'm using another app? Also, how long do you think it will take for this scanning of people and mostly duplicates to start and more importantly finish? Thank you. Your videos are really helpful!
Terrific Tutorial! How do you identify and delete duplicate photos in an album, e.g Vacation 2022?
great tutorial great new feature in photos app I have photos of my art work some large files some small files and some with different extensions but all of the same photo so I want to keep a separate file for each cause some times I just need a small thumb nail of my art or large files for my print on demand service which only accept a certain size so I have many types of files of my art, know I can immediately compare these photos and their file and extensions with out having to guess if I'm accidentally deleting photos that I went out of my way to make,😁 thanks photo app and thanks macmosts guy for sharing
Thanks for the tip!! I almost forgot this feature... Mine duplicates were mostly screenshots 🤦♂
Thank you so much! Now I can clean up my phone and iPad.
Tank you, my duplicates didn't show up. I have 10's of thousands of photos... they're just not showing up yet. Thank you!!! I'll give it some time to update.
Update: FWIW 331 duplicates showed up 1 day later. After merging the duplicates the option disappeared. Apparently it doesn’t show up on the menu UNLESS there are duplicates.
Thank you very much for your insightful explanation, as always.
you saved me a billion hours of scrolling - thank you very much
THANKS! These 90 duplicates were chewing up my memory.
If you have say a new Mac but an iPhone 7, and you delete duplicates on the Mac, will the duplicate photos be removed from the iOS15 iPhone too? Assuming it’s the case but I’ve seen iCloud photos have a mind of its own on different devices
Yes, if you are using iCloud Photos, that should work.
Slightly unrelated, but still, another needed way to clean up the Recents album: will Apple EVER give us the option of removing a photo from Recents once I have put it into another album? I have THOUSANDS in Recents. Finding things would be SO much easier if I could remove the ones I’ve also saved elsewhere. Gary, if you have any influence, and you SHOULD, please suggest this option!
What are you saying? Recents are must to know exactly about photos. If you don’t need Recents, ignore it.
Don't use the special "Recents" for this. Just view "All Photos" in your library. I never use "recents" at all, only Library (All Photos) and Albums sometimes.
What happens if two duplicates are in two different albums. Which photo stays in which album? ... Thanks for the video...
If you merge them, there wouldn't be a duplicate anymore. You'd have ONE photo, and it would be in both albums.
Thanks Gary, is there anyway to delete duplicate photos in iMac? kindly explain
This feature will come to macOS with Ventura soon.
Thank you for the video . Super appreciated . I have been sync my iPhone picture with usb cable to my Mac for last 2 years while I’m actually using iCloud services .now . I noticed only yesterday sync with usb cable … it never copied all my iPhone ( with icloud ) picture to my Mac . Only partially some pictures . I activated last night finally on iPhoto , my Mac the iCloud feature to copy original pictures to my Mac ( still waiting for those missing pictures to be copied on my Mac hard drive ) . But since I noticed it made tons duplications on my iCloud pictures …..
Great summary and tutorial! Thanks so much. Now just waiting for my new ios 16.1 to scan all my thousands of photos!
I just did this on my Mac Mini and I had 3000 duplicates. This really cleaned up a lot for me.
Excellent!!!!!! Thank you sooooo much
You explained it better than anyone else !
Hi! I’m trying to find your video in archiving iMovie files to save space on the internal hard drive. Could you point me to it please? Thanks!
I have a very old one on that (search and it comes right up) but the way I would recommend doing it today is to stick to the rule of one project = one library. Use iMovie libraries as iMovie "documents" so you can easily move them to another drive when you are done with them.
@@macmost That’s great. I’ll try that. Thank you.
Thank you, very helpful video !
Thanks Gary, very helpful👍🏻
Thank you so much for the very clear instruction on how this works. I find practically all of your videos very easy to follow. Thanks
This is very useful, but I noticed I have a bunch of duplicates photos with 2 different dates. It looks like the merge function keeps the oldest one and delete the most recent one. Is it the expected behaviour? Thanks
If that is what it is doing, then I would assume so. Makes sense.
Brilliant. Been waiting years for this.
A great video and a well needed feature. One question, . . . I have photos that aren't exact duplicates and I want to save both of them, but I want the duplicate algorithm to bypass this the next time it checks for duplicates. Is there a feature to do this?
No, you just have to ignore that one.
@@macmost Thank you very much.
How does it choose the date? Many times you have dups- with different dates…. Which one does it merge to ??
I'd imagine the date on the remaining photo would be the earlier one, which makes logical sense. But try it and see.
Great video and I appreciate the explanation. I do have a question about duplicates. We just returned from a vacation in which we went to the mansions in Newport RI. We went to three mansion, all of those photos of the went into one album along with photos around town. I’ve decided to make three new albums, one for each mansion. Will the merge allow me to chose which album to remove duplicates duplicates from? I would like to keep my RI pictures around town in the original album separate from the mansions. Thank you!
So, do you have duplicates? Sounds like you just have one photo and have placed it in two albums. Those aren't duplicates. You only have the photo once. Albums are just different lists of photos that link to the originals in your library.
Hi Gary,
I have a phone and tablet.
I have never created albums.
Many photos do not show up in chronological order, and even change by years.
Do I need to create albums for all of my photos to get of the them into chronological order?
If I have a bunch of photos with flowers and some also have people in them, does this application pick up the photos or the people?
Thank you for your great videos
What view are you using when you see these photos out of order? Library > All Photos? Or something else? If you check the dates on the photos are they correct? I don't know what you are asking by "pick up the photos or the people?" What do you mean by that?
I updated to Ios16 today and the Duplicate option does not display in my Utilities as you referenced? Any idea why it isn't displaying the option?
0:59
Thank you for the explanation. It helped 👍😁
Another very helpful video, Gary! Thanks!
thanks for this one
A great explanation Gary! Initially, after upgrading to iOS 16, the Duplicates album didn't appear. But a day or so later I now have a Duplicates album showing 322 duplicate photos (just as you explained). I'm going to test whether the Merge process preserves any album designations for photos allocated to albums (where one of the duplicates hadn't previously been allocated to an album, but was the one chosen as the best in the Merge process). This was also a question raised by LWH LWH here in the Comments. Thanks Gary - another topic expertly and succinctly demonstrated, as always! 👍⭐
Hi John, were you able to test it out and see if the album designations still worked?
@@PaulKrone-SaintLucia Hi Paul. Yes the album designation did work on the test I did. Sorry I didn't post back here about it. I allocated a photo having a small size (low resolution) to a Test album. Its duplicate was much larger in size (high resolution), but hadn't been allocated to that album. After merging, the larger sized photo was shown in the Test album, even though it wasn't originally allocated. The smaller sized photo no longer appeared in the Test album. Clearly, the better photo (with higher resolution and size) replaced the lower resolution photo in the album. Hope I've explained that clearly and that it helps you.
@@cogmovies This is exactly what I've been trying to find out, thank you so much for this!
@@elfichilds5340 Glad it helped you Elfi - thank you for your comment! 👍😎
Gary, I make video's for a funeral home, sometimes families send big files and there are duplicates in the video. I have to physically go through and try to find them...Is there any way to search the pictures in the video without having to look manually. What I mean by video is there are many single pictures all put together to make a video, Any suggestions??
So you are re-editing their video slideshow? Not sure if there is any shortcut that would make that easier.
okay thanks so much I was afraid of that. I am acutally making the video from pictures that they send me.
@@macmost
Hello, Just updated OS16. I have lots of duplicates photos but not showing duplicate in utility. What should I do?
If you just updated, wait. Check again tomorrow. It takes time to find them.
Updated on iPad and iPhone but in utilities on iPad it doesn’t have duplicates and I know I have lots of duplicates. Does this new update not apply to iPads? iPhone I only had 45 duplicates.
You have to wait. It takes time for the device to find the duplicates. Check again tomorrow.
Very useful and clear explanation, as always. Thanks!!!
Explained so well as always ... appreciate it so much! Thank you!
Wow man! What a thorough video on the subject at hand. Thank you Brother. Subscribed. Wonder if they’ll bring this valuable feature also to the iPad os16?
Yes, it is on the iPad and Mac as well with the latest versions of iPadOS and macOS.
@@macmost Thank you for letting me know bro. I was hesitant to upgrade my m1 12.9 pro to the latest update. But now I have a good reason to do it. Just deleted or merged 2600 photos on my iPhone 13. As a photographer and designer this to me is one of the best features introduced with ios 16. Thanks again. Going to update my iPad software right away.
So glad I found this site. Great information.,
I found this very interesting. Glad to know iOS 16 has this ability. You did a great job taking a topic that can be confusing (especially mentioning the resolution factor difference) and clearly communicating the options and solutions. Keep up the great work!!!!
Thanks for the video.
But I Still have a question: I have similar photos (not the same) that are shown in duplicates. And I want to keep all of them. Is there a way of removing them out of the duplicate folder?
Thank you 😊
Good question. There does not appear to be a way. Hopefully something they'll add.
Very useful
I have thousands (~7,000) of duplicates and don't have hours of time to merge each photo. Is there a way (or app) that can do all at once? Thanks for advice!!!!
Yes, but I recommend against it. If you don't have time now, just do a few. Then a few later. What's the rush? Otherwise, you can select multiple ones the way you select multiple things anywhere in macOS (Shift+click to select a range).
@@macmost Too late, I took your advice and downloaded the program you recommended. It only deleted 6,000 so I have another 1,000 to do by hand. Hopefully I have not screwed things up too much!
@@really9025 Program I recommended? I have never recommended another app for deleting duplicate photos in the Photos app. Not sure what you mean by that.
Again an excellent
Thanks bunches
This is another great feature from iOS 16. Gary, great job showing how to detect the duplicates. I took care of all the duplicates already 👏🏽
Thank you Gary as mentioned in the many comments, you do a great job in providing very clear instructions and your videos very easy to follow. I still have an iPhone 6s+ but will am reviewing my options for a new cell, I look forward to the release of Ventura when I can use this new feature to search & merge duplicates.
Thank you greatly for this video. You even put in the effort to really dig into this new ability and show us how to manipulate it. 👍🏼
This is awesome! I think I will wait till this comes out on the new MacOS update if my old iMac 2017 will get the new update.
thanks for making this so clear. this feature would be worth moving to apple for
Thanks Gary for another great video! I have an iPhone X with duplicate Photos in the library but the photo feature “duplicate photos” doesn’t appear. Do you know why? Thanks.
Perhaps wait for it to find them? No idea why it wouldn't show for you if you are sure you have actual duplicates.
Plug in mobile and charge battery for full night. You will find many duplicates in the morning.
@@macmost Thank you for your prompt reply.
@@bharatkiseema The phone was plugged in last night. Unfortunately it didn't work. Thank you for your reply.
A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️
If I have a photo in my library (I.e all photos), but the same photo is in a specific album, will it show up as a duplicate? If so, would the merge feature delete one of the photos?
No, that isn't a duplicate. Albums just link to the photo in the library. You aren't duplicating anything when you add a photo to an album. See th-cam.com/video/F5VnR4LY0pk/w-d-xo.html
Does this keep Album information? I’d hate it if this tool were to make me reorganize my photos.
Yes. If A is in album 1 and B is in album 2 and A and B are duplicates then it deletes B and A is now in both albums 1 and 2. Try it and see.
3:32 where did you go? 😂
I didn't know this existed until I watched the video, and I'd just imported maybe 100 GB of photos to Photos, thinking I'd found all the duplicates - IOS 16 found 450 duplicates. Using the merge function was a whole lot easier than manually going through the duplicates (in my case, AGAIN).
I like this thing but when I have tried it I have felt so "unsure" to click merge when I have more than two photos marked as duplicates. I never know what apple thinks is the better photo... is it the photo with bigger resolution or bigger file size or what.
If there is any difference at all, it will choose the higher resolution one.
Does it also work with .gif, or only .jpeg?
Does it detect diplicates from hidden folder too?
I don't think so. Try it and see. But I would think they would exclude the Hidden folder, right?
Gary, what happens if one of the duplicate photos is in an album? Is that noted? Will merge preserve that?
Not sure. But it probably is.
Good question LWH LWH. I was thinking the same. It's something I'll have to test. Logically, it should preserve the album designation, given that it preserves the metadata and caption from each duplicate photo.
So won’t this delete photos from albums if duplicates are in them how would you know if your messing up an album, a photo my be in a few albums.
Reports are that if one of the duplicates is in an album, and you merge, the one remaining will be in that album.
Thank you very much for this video.
14pro max ios 16.5 update version
Duplicate folder is not available how to fixed?
Either you have no duplicates, or maybe you just need to wait another day or two for it to find them.
So there are duplicate(multiple) videos explaining this feature. Apparently someone hit the merge button and here is the higher quality video that remained. Finally this new feature is explained and now understood! Thanks!
I don’t have the update yet? When will 16 come to my iPhone?
Which iPhone do you have? You can find the compatibility list here: www.apple.com/ios/ios-16/
I have 6,200 photos 70 video duplicates, can I speed it up faster then 1 @ a time, x 2 buttons
You can select multiple ones the normal way you do in macOS. But I recommend against it. Your photos are valuable. Don't do it in bulk and make a mistake and lose a photo forever. Do a few here and a few there, over days, weeks, or months. You'll get there. Be patient, it is worth it.
Very useful video. I have 1600 duplicate photos. No idea how that happened. Is there a way to delete them in one swoop?
Yep! I think you can just press the select button at the top and then it will give you the option to merge all photos. Hope this helps!
No. And you don't want to. You don't want an automatic process that could delete one you want. Never worth it. Just review them a few here and a few there over time. No rush.
@@antongrimm Yeah, I figured it out. But thanks!
@@macmost Thanks. That'll take me a while, but that's OK. Again, great video!
Hi Gary, this is really useful thanks. Does merge also preserve album assignments of both photos - e.g. if Photo 1 is in Album A and Photo 2 is in Album B, will it put the retained photo into the other album?
Other commenters here have reported that it does.
@@macmost excellent news, thanks.
I do not have a duplicate photos showing in my drop menu under utilities on my iPad Pro but I do on my iPhone. I’m running the newest IOS and yes I have about 10,000 photos. HELP
Probably just need to wait longer for them to show up on your iPad. In the meantime, if you are inpatient, you can merge them on your iPhone.
@@macmost I’ve done it on my iPhone and worked perfectly
This is wonderfull, thanks so much!
I uploaded the iOS 16 but don’t have the duplicate in album’s? I have an iPhone 11 Pro? Not sure about the pro part!
0:58
Finally!
This has been a much requested and needed feature for years. Based on the features you show, it looks as if Apple did it right.
Is there any way when I shuffle I can have different widgets and color for each photo while it still is on shuffle. Because when I do it right now it all the photos have the same widgets, font, and color.
I don't know what you are talking about. Shuffle photos? Widgets?
I have an iPhone 12 Pro and i installed IOS16 the day it was released AND i know i have a couple hundred duplicates; however, I don’t even have the menu option for Duplicates in the Photos App. I think Apple has a bug in this feature.
wait. on my Iph12 it showed after 2 days.
Perhaps you just haven't given it enough time.
In my Photos Library, I want to transfer many of these to a sub-album, i.e. Vacation, for instance. However, once stored in the designated album, the original still appears in the Photos Library, still cluttering that main Library. Is there a method to actually move the photo to an album for storage and reference, but have the photo no longer appear in the main Library?
This is the reason to have an Album, so they no longer appear in the main Library. I want the photos organized in easy to locate Albums, not duplicated.
When you view the "Photos Library" it is a list of ALL of the photos in your photos library. So yes, it includes everything. You can't have something in an album that isn't in your library.
These are not duplicates. They are just different ways of viewing your photos. The Library view is everything. Albums are collections you create. If you want to only view albums, then just view your albums and don't look in at the "Library" view.
See th-cam.com/video/F5VnR4LY0pk/w-d-xo.html
@@macmost Thanks Mac. And yep, I realize they’re not considered duplicates for the reason you stated. Just wish I didn’t have the originals still in the Library making it difficult to locate photos I’ve not placed in an Album, if that makes sense. In the grand scheme of life, this remains a trivial matter but thought I’d ask. Thanks for the video!
@@BeckVMH You need to re-think "in the Library." Your Library is everything, by definition. If you want to see what is not in an album, create a Smart Album with "Album is not any" and you'll see everything not in an album.
@@macmost Will do, thank you.
I wonder if you can help me out here,
I had all my music on a 256gb sd card by Transcend and it has finally given up the ghost, it is totally dead, I have been dropping dragging and updating my 10,000+ songs by artist from my SSD luckily I made a music backup folder but when I dropped and dragged it was a mess with a lot of ‘unknown’ even though the artist was there, anyway long story short how can I get my music that was on and in iTunes off of my iPhone 13 Pro Max to my Macbook Pro 16” 2021 without losing the music ? Do you have a safe recommendation of a third party app or know of a way to do it ? If not I will have to continue adding the artists and albums in batches to make sure everything is where it should be..
Could really do with your help…
Thanks man
Love, Purpose n Peace
MCD
From your iPhone to your Mac? There's no good way. If you are using old-fashioned sync, then the sync goes Mac-to-iPhone, not the other way around. There are sketchy third-party apps that will do some of it, but it will be a mess. Going from your backup to your Mac is going to be better. Then for next time make sure you have a real backup (Time Machine, online, etc) for your files.
I’m operating on iOS 15.7 on an iphone SE. This feature doesn’t show up and I KNOW I have duplicates. Until I have space to upgrade I need to find another way 😭
This is a feature of iOS 16. It wouldn't be there in iOS 15.
Really helpful and so much more detailed than other explainers. But... while merge does remove the duplicate data (the new merged photos point to the same original file) it seems like it still leaves them -- disordered in my view -- visible in each of the folders in which they originally sat. i.e. PHOTO1 is still visible in ALBUM1 and PHOTO1-DUPLICATE is still visible in ALBUM2. The duplicate data is gone but the visual duplicate, is still there. This makes sense to users whose folders a well-organised things perhaps by topic, where one might be FAMILY PHOTOS and another might be PHOTOS 2022 and you want the picture of your parents in both. It's less ideal for those who *want* to remove one of the duplicates (not just the duplicate data) from all the folders but the chosen one (a result of years of messy importing practices from various devices/cameras before duplicate-detection existed). While choosing to delete (not merge) one of the duplicates does prevent this, there is no info showing in which folder each photo sits and thus which one you are deleting. Or am I somehow missing this? Seems pretty crucial. If that exists and someone knows how to find it, please let me know. Or maybe I should sit tight and hope that this will be added in an update?
This deals with duplicate photos in your library. The same photo in two albums is NOT a duplicate. There is just one photo, listed in two places. Albums are kind of like playlists in Music or Smart Folders in the Finder. They are just lists of photos from your library. When you merge two photos, it correctly keeps the photo in both albums as it should. Lots of people would be very upset if it did not.
If your goal is to clean up your albums, then go into each album and remove photos you don't want to see there anymore. It is up to you how you use albums.
@@macmost Yes, I realise that. That's what I meant by 'visible' in different albums even if the *data* of the photo itself is not duplicated. Apologies if my terminology was not clear. The problem is that I don't want such photos visible ('listed') in several albums. I would like all the photos from japan 2010 to be in the 'japan 2015' album and the photos from london in 2020 to be in the 'london 2020' album and *not* also visible/listed in albums called things like 'photo import dump done in 2021ish' and 'did i import these already?' and 'photos pulled of an old phone many of which will have already been imported back when i used it', and so on. There are over a dozen such random albums made up entirely of massive photo dumps that -- as well as trying to eliminate duplicates -- I am trying to organise. For people who have been with Apple Photos or similar from Day 1, particularly if they mostly shoot on phones -- many users I'm sure -- then you are absolutely right. Their issue is only the duplicates, they don't have the album organisation issue. For users like me, who have been taking pictures since before the cloud or even digital photos were a thing, and who have switched between various kinds of Android, iPhone, SLRs, video cameras, wired and wireless export/import, etc, then it's not all in a neat, chronological Apple-organised stream. And given the number of photos involved -- many 000s -- it's not trivial to sort it out manually. So yes, it would be terrible for most users if it automatically removed the visibility/listing of the image in all but one album, but it need not do that. It could tell you in which album each duplicate photo sits and then you can chose to delete the one you don't want (typically in the 'wrong' album) or merge them. You already get lots of info from right-clicking an image in the duplicates list, down to the lens used, so it would be trivial for Apple to list the album it sits in too. In fact I think there is a 3rd party app, Power Photos, that does just that with duplicates it finds but I'm wary of using a 3rd party app that might damage the library. Anyway, maybe Apple will include this simple but useful info in future releases. Fingers crossed...
@@mobiledisco Keep in mind that when you add a photo to an album where it is already there, it is still going to be there just once. So in the case of your "Japan 2010" and "Japan 2015" albums, just go to the Japan 2010 album, select all, and move them into Japan 2015. Then delete the Japan 2010 album. In the case of "photo import dump done in 2021ish" maybe just delete that album completely.
I know there’s a separate folder for screenshots, but if a person takes a screenshot of a photo and crops it the same will that appear in duplicates with the photo you took the screenshot of?
There is an album (not a folder) for them yes. If you crop it, it will be cropped. You'd have to duplicate it first, then crop it. Not sure if it will appear as a duplicate then. Try it and see.
I have duplicates in my photo gallery on my iPhone. I did what you said, updated to 16.1.1 and the duplicate detection doesn't work. I still have hundreds of duplicate photos that don't have a trash can icon. So I can't even get rid of those one by one. You have any other suggestions?
How long have you waited? It won't appear right away. Give it a few days to work to find them.
@@macmost It's been 4 days and its only found 4 out of a few hundred duplicates. Didn't work for me, hope it worked for others. Also, these duplicates are pictures I can't trash. There is no trash symbol at the bottom of these duplicates.
@@sizzlemann Are you on an iPhone? iPad? Mac? Is an iPhone, are you perhaps not letting it charge at night? I don't think it works at this if the battery is in use and it is lower. But if you don't see a trash icon I wonder if these are photos manually synced to your iPhone instead of using iCloud Photos? Or maybe in a Shared album?
@@macmost these are photos on an iPhone. I don't use iCloud. Phone is fully charged at night and never gets below 50% at any time. I load my photos to my Macbook Pro now and then. But somehow they made duplicates of all the photos and put them into my iPhone. I can delete the original, but not the duplicate. I want to get rid of all the duplicates but not sure how to do that.
@@sizzlemann It really depends on why the duplicates are there and what you did to create them. I wouldn't want to advise you how to delete something so valuable without knowing more and seeing firsthand what the problem is. So perhaps work with an expert on that to have them look at what is going on.
I know this isn’t an iCloud shared library in ios 16, but I was just curious. My mom has her photos on her Mac stored on an external hard drive. Do you know if those photos will work with the iCloud shared library, or do they have to already be in the iCloud photo library?
Are they in iCloud Photo Library now? (You can have your iCloud Photo Library stored on an external drive, they aren't exclusive). If they are in iCloud now, they should be able to be in the new shared library feature when that is available.
@@macmost My mom’s photos are stored on photos library but on an external hard drive (not on her mac).
She can only view them on her mac when she connects her external hard drive. She can not see those photos on her iPhone.
@@ethanmenzel So they are not in iCloud Photos? If so, then they definitely can't use the new iCloud Shared Library feature when it comes out.
@@macmost booooo!
@@ethanmenzel I mean it is just a simple matter of photos not in iCloud Photos cannot use iCloud Photos features. Why not just turn on iCloud Photos for her then if that is what you want?
If two photos have different time stamps, but are otherwise identical, I assume that it will take the earliest timestamp..can you confirm this?
I don't know. I don't have two such photos handy to test. If you get a chance to try it...
Another commenter here said he tried it and it is the earliest. That makes the most sense anyway.
I want to see duplicates
Perfect
How long would it take to find duplicates if I had 20 thousand photos?
No idea. Check tomorrow.
Keep mobile plugged in while night….. in the morning you will find many duplicates.
I definitely have duplicate videos and I have no duplicate album
Finally
Nice feature. I will take your advice and wait for Ventura. Thanks for the tutorial.
i cant see it on my iphone X
Either you don't have any duplicates, or you haven't waited long enough.
It has found 9,000 photos and 600 videos. Can I merge them all in on swoop
I live in the uk and find your videos excellent to follow for a 77yrs old
No, and you don't want it to. An "automatic" process may delete something you want to keep. First, figure out why you have so many duplicates if you don't already know (a mistaken import from a while back?) so it doesn't happen again. Then just take the time to go through some duplicates here and there when you have time.
This is a brilliant development! Thanks, Garry 🤗
I wonder, if one was in an album (the one that you wanted to keep), and the other was not…i wonder where the merged one would end up…
Oh, I see what you mean. Be easy to check if you happen to have a duplicate and want to test it.
I downloaded 16 on Monday however it took 2 days to run a duplicate service. I created 3 duplicates on Monday but the phone found different/old duplicate pics. It takes some time..
What I want (maybe it exists) is an easy way to intelligently sort all my millions of images over the years into accurate categories and folders with the ability to add rules for custom sorting, such as if you wanted sorting all screenshots taken on X date or it would know what a painting looks like or a sculpture or wood or metal or whatever and be able to show you all images with wood or metal, or both, to show you multiple categories at the same time like “show me screenshots of wood, metal, on X date”. Let’s say you have lots of screenshots from someone else, if you said show screenshots taken on X date it would only show screenshots you took (much easier since it would have data knowing you took a screenshot and would also know if you cropped it and you should be able to specify show I cropped images and cropped images and add screenshots and then it would sort by screenshots that were cropped, or with filter settings changes, or if you drew on it or whatever. You could have many detailed sorting options you could combine together and it just figures it out because it already knows how you modified the file so it’s just a matter of drawing from that information. So that’s searching but after you search you should be able to add it to a folder after you confirm you like the sorting criteria and then after then you could sent it to automatically add future images to that folder. Let’s say you have lots of folders and want to generall browse them like “recent” in “photos”. Oh no! All those folders are now unsorted, or you have to go browse each one. So that’s easy you just let people select what folders you want to see in that view. You could have an option to see images it’s not sure about and even have a slider to say how strong it’s criteria needs to put an image in a folder, like if you selected “wood” you could select how much wood is needed to be put in the wood folder. Or if you have an orange folder set it to 80% strength to need lots of orange, or it puts ALL images with any orange in it.
Apple Pay me for ideas pls 😂
Seems like adding keywords to your photos is what you want. th-cam.com/video/h-a739LKnro/w-d-xo.html
Don work when you go from android to iphone....
Not sure how Android has anything to do with this.
@@macmost i mean when you migrate from android to ios, this method doesn't work..
@@with_love2963 It should work on any Photos in your Photos library. It shouldn't make any difference where the photos originated from.
Didn’t work I have a tablet 👎🏻
This same function is available on the iPad if you have iPadOS 16. Remember you need to wait a bit after updating for it to appear and it will only appear if you have any duplicates to find.
Sounds very convenient. But then the road to hell is paved with convenience. It’s getting a little creepy in a big brother sort of way having Apple constantly analyzing the content of our photos. I know they say they are the king of privacy. But it’s creepy.
Apple isn't analyzing anything. It is YOUR iPhone doing it.
@@macmost Apple makes the iPhone. In light of recent years I have no trust in the silicon valley tech companies who make their products in Communist China. They have no problem dealing with that totalitarian regime so I would not be surprised if they lied about privacy. Just my opinion.
@@cnyphotovideo Yes, but it isn't some Apple server doing the work, in some building somewhere. That is what privacy advocates are usually concerned about: your photos available to others during the process. So this happens on the tool in your possession. Not sure how any feature like this could exist otherwise. Or anything at all on your iPhone. Apple makes the software (iOS) that is doing the work in the USA. And the parts come from all over the world. The chips in the iPhone, at least the CPU, is actually produced in Taiwan, not mainland China. Others come from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and the USA. Assembly in China, but also some in Brazil and maybe India.
Yeah, well.... I found over 11K duplicates... Oops.