How To Delete Duplicate Photos On Mac Photos App

The Best Way to Delete Duplicate Photos in Mac Photos App

This article will show you how to find and delete duplicate photos in Mac's Photos app easily, quickly and safely.

Photos (previously iPhoto) is a photo management app included with macOS (previously Mac OS X and then OS X). When we import photos to Mac, we tend to import them to Photos instead of a normal folder. The photos in Photos app are stored in Photos Library (with the extension .photoslibrary) resided in the default Pictures folder. Duplicates may have accumulated in Photos over years. And you may want to remove duplicate photos.

Manually getting rid of them may take hours and even days. Luckily, there is a better method.

This article is updated on April 6, 2021.

How to remove duplicate photos on Mac effortlessly

Th i s method uses Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac, an app to find and delete duplicate images, videos, audios, documents, archives and more on Mac.

Also designed for the Photos app, Cisdem Duplicate Finder can safely remove duplicates from Photos Library. It will scan your library, list the found duplicate photos for you to view, automatically select duplicates and then move selected items to Recently Deleted in Photos app. You only need to eliminate them in Recently Deleted with a click.

Apple warns users of certain duplicate file finders that can damage Photos Library when deleting dupes. It's true that some apps work that way. And they directly delete data from the library. But with this Cisdem app, as you can see, the process is safe and reliable, much like how a human would search for and handle duplicate images from within Photos app.

Here's a video tutorial. The tutorial uses an earlier version of Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac.

macOS 10.10 or later

In the instructions below, I use the latest version of the app.

How to delete duplicate photos on Mac

Step 1. In the Photos app on your Mac, go to Preferences.

Step 2. Click Use as System Photo Library to make your Photos Library the System Photo Library. If the button is grayed out and not clickable, then your library is already the System Photo Library.

Click Show in Finder, which will open Finder and locate your library.

Step 3. Download the latest version of Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac from the official download link. Install the app.

It supports macOS 10.10 or later, including macOS 11 Big Sur.

Step 4. Drag the Photos Library (located in Step 2) into the app. Click Scan.

Step 5. Read the message that pops up. Click Yes.

Step 6. When the scan is done, you can go to the Images tab in the results window.

There, you can view, sort and preview the duplicate photos in Photos app on Mac. There are three preview modes. And you can zoom in/out the preview.

Step 7. As you can see, duplicate photos are listed as groups. In each group of duplicates, you want to keep one photo and delete the rest. Luckily, Cisdem Duplicate Finder automatically selects duplicates for you to eliminate with one click.

If not satisfied with the auto-selection, highlight all the items under Images tab with Command-A and then click the list icon to apply a desired selection rule.

Also, it's possible to manually select or deselect.

Step 8. Now unwanted photo duplicates are selected. Click Delete.

Step 9. Click Delete to allow it to delete duplicate photos on your Mac.

Now the selected unwanted dupes are moved to Recent Deleted in Photos app. To permanently delete them right away, you can click Delete All in Recent Deleted.

Note 1: If your Mac is running macOS 10.14 Mojave and earlier, Step 9 will be different. See the detailed instructions in the official user guide.

Note 2: If you have multiple libraries for Photos and want to scan one of them for duplicate photos, it will require a couple of additional steps. See the detailed instructions in the official user guide.

How To Delete Duplicate Photos On Mac Photos App

Source: https://medium.com/@jasonbnovak0/how-to-delete-duplicate-photos-in-os-x-photos-app-b0dac6c67d34

Posted by: brinsonthroosed.blogspot.com

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