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How To Delete Duplicate Photos From iPhone
With the iPhone, a photo is snapped quickly, often perhaps too quickly. Our digital albums tend to accumulate snapshots that are either of poor quality or so similar that you would only need to keep one of them and delete the rest. But what is the easiest way to do this? Since iOS 16, the Photos app has a built-in Duplicates album that automatically finds duplicate photos and videos — free of charge and without any third-party app. For similar or blurred photos, which iOS does not detect, the Gemini Photos app is still a good choice.
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Delete duplicate photos with the Photos app (iOS 16 or later)
Since iOS 16, the Photos app automatically detects duplicate photos and videos and collects them in the “Duplicates” album. Here’s how to remove them:
1. Open the Photos app and tap the “Albums” tab at the bottom.
2. Scroll down to the “Utilities” section and tap “Duplicates”. If the album is missing, you either have no duplicates yet or your iPhone is still scanning your library — the scan usually runs while the iPhone is charging.
3. Tap “Merge” on a duplicate pair to combine the two copies. To clean up everything at once, tap “Select” in the top right corner, then “Select All” and finally “Merge”.
When you merge duplicates, iOS keeps the highest-quality photo and combines the relevant data (captions, favorites, keywords) from all copies. The remaining duplicates are moved to the “Recently Deleted” album, where they stay for 30 days before being deleted permanently.
Important: The Duplicates album only catches exact duplicates. Similar, slightly different or blurred photos and screenshots are not detected. For those, the Gemini Photos app below is the better choice.
Delete similar photos on iPhone with Gemini Photos
In the App Store you can find some apps that are suitable for deleting bad and similar pictures – but most of them are not free. You can download the Gemini Photos app from the App Store and try it for 3 days for free. After the free trial period has expired, you can subscribe to the app for 4,99 $ per month or 11,99 $ per year. You can cancel the subscription at any time.
Once you’ve installed Gemini Photos, launch the app on your iPhone and give it access to your photos and allow it to send you messages (but it’s not mandatory). The app will then automatically analyze all photos that are on your iPhone and in iCloud.
Go to “Similar” and you will see similar or duplicate photos sorted by “Date” or “Event”. In the “Date” view tap on one of the preview pictures to see all similar pictures for a specific month.
The best photo will be shown first, while you can reach the bad versions with a swipe from right to left. By default, the latter are already marked for deletion with a red check mark.
If you’d rather keep one or more photos, simply uncheck the bottom right corner of the image or tap “Deselect All” in the top right corner to uncheck all the photos at once. If you no longer want certain photos to appear in this section, select “Keep All” below the respective photos. You will then find these photos in the “Ignore List” in the Menu.
Tap the “Move [X] to Trash” button to remove the similar images you don’t need.
Delete duplicate photos with Gemini Photos
To delete all duplicate and identical photos, go to the “Duplicates” section. Then select the “Delete [X] Duplicates” button at the bottom of the screen. If you still want to keep some of the duplicate photos, tap the preview picture and uncheck the duplicate. Confirm the deletion by tapping “Delete” in the pop-up window.
The photos will then be removed from iCloud Photos on all your devices. By the way, you can still find the deleted photos in the “Recently Deleted” album in the “Photos” app.
Delete other data garbage
The app not only sorts out similar and duplicate photos, but also captures blurred photos in the “Blurred” section and “Screenshots”. By default, all photos are marked here, which you can recognize by the red check marks.
If you want to keep a photo, you can remove the respective check mark by tapping it. Then tap “Delete All” at the bottom of the screen to remove all the selected photos from your iPhone.
