How to find and delete duplicate photos on a Mac

What Photos counts as a duplicate

Since macOS 13 Ventura, Photos finds two kinds of duplicates by itself: exact copies of a photo or video, even when their dates, captions or other details differ, and photos that look the same but are saved at a different resolution or in a different format, such as a HEIC original and a JPEG export of it.

It does not group photos that are only similar: five shots of the same moment, a burst, or the same picture taken a second later. Each of those is a different photo, so it stays out of Duplicates.

How to merge duplicates in Photos

1. Open Photos and click Duplicates under Utilities in the sidebar. If you don't see it, hover over Utilities and click the arrow next to it.
2. Each row is one set of duplicates. Look through them, and enlarge any set where the copies differ: a cropped or lower-resolution copy may be one you made on purpose.
3. Select the sets to merge. Click a row to select it, ⌘-click to add more, or press ⌘ A to select them all.
4. Click Merge, then confirm. One photo stays where the copies were, and the others go to Recently Deleted.

If you use an iCloud Shared Photo Library, choose Both Libraries from the Library menu in the toolbar first, so duplicates across the two are shown too.

What Merge keeps

Apple says merging keeps the highest-quality version and combines the details of the copies into it, such as captions, keywords and favorites. Some people report that Photos doesn't always keep the largest file, so for photos that matter, check the result before you empty Recently Deleted.

Merged copies stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days, where you can recover them. With iCloud Photos on, merging also removes the copies from your iPhone, iPad and iCloud.com, since they share one library.

If Duplicates doesn't appear

• Photos shows Duplicates only when it has found some. After you upgrade macOS or import many photos, it can take a while to analyze the library, so leave Photos open for a time and check again.
• Copies of a photo that sit in Finder folders, outside the Photos library, never show up there.
• Photos only checks the library that is open. If you keep more than one, open each in turn: hold ⌥ Option while you open Photos to choose.

Find duplicate photos in your folders

Photos imported from a folder, a camera card or an old Mac often still sit in Pictures, Downloads or on an external drive as well. If Photos was set to Copy items to the Photos library when you imported them, which is the default, every one of those files is a second copy taking up space.

Finder has no duplicate finder. Sorting a folder by size in List view shows copies that sit side by side, but not copies with different names in different folders. To find those, compare the files' contents in Terminal. This command only lists, it doesn't delete anything:

cd ~/Pictures
find . -type f \( -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.heic' -o -iname '*.png' \) -not -path '*.photoslibrary/*' -exec shasum -a 256 {} + | sort | awk '{ h = $1; f = substr($0, 67) } h == p { if (!s) print "\n" pf; print f; s = 1; next } { p = h; pf = f; s = 0 }'

It prints each set of identical files together, whatever their names. Change ~/Pictures to another folder, such as ~/Downloads or /Volumes/ followed by a drive's name, to check that instead. Then move the copies you don't need to the Trash in Finder, keeping one of each.

Never delete files from inside a .photoslibrary package in Finder. Photos keeps track of every file in it, and removing one by hand can damage the library. Delete library photos from Photos itself.

Similar photos and bursts

Near-identical shots are usually a bigger share of a library than exact copies, and Photos doesn't find them for you. You can go through them by hand:

• For a burst, open it and click Make a Selection, pick the shots to keep, and let Photos remove the rest.
• For other shots of the same moment, zoom in on the grid in Library, select the ones you don't want and press ⌘ Delete.
• For screenshots, click Screenshots under Media Types in the sidebar, which lists every screenshot in the library.

Get the space back

Deleted photos keep using space until they leave Recently Deleted. To free it now, click Recently Deleted under Utilities, check what is there, and choose Delete All. This can't be undone.

With iCloud Photos and Optimize Mac Storage on, your Mac keeps only small versions of many photos, so removing duplicates frees more iCloud storage than space on the Mac. For what else fills your disk, see how to free up disk space on a Mac.

Clean up photos with Tidy My Mac

Tidy My Mac does the parts Photos doesn't, and shows what it found before anything is removed:

• Photos groups similar shots in your library and in Pictures, Desktop and Downloads, suggests the best one of each to keep, and lists old screenshots and, if you ask, blurry photos. Library photos go to Recently Deleted, files to the Trash.
• Duplicates finds exact copies of any file in your folders or on a drive, matched byte for byte, always keeps one of each, and shows how much space removing them would really free.
• Large Files lists big videos, which often take more space than all the duplicate photos together.

The comparison runs on your Mac, using only previews already on it, so your iCloud originals aren't downloaded and nothing about your photos is sent anywhere.