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Apple has FINALLY brought duplicate merge/deletion capability to your devices!

Geoff Horwitz • Jan 19, 2023

One of my favorite new features in iOS 16 and macOS 13 gives you the ability to merge and delete duplicate photos, from within the Photo App. 

Do you have tens of thousands of photos on your iPhone, Mac, iCloud? How many of those are duplicates? Why hasn’t Apple made it easy to get rid of those duplicate photos? Believe it or not, having photo duplicates can and will slow your devices down because your hard drive will running out of space, and so will your iCloud storage, and thus the head ache begins.


Now, along comes iOS 16 and macOS 13, and Apple has FINALLY brought duplicate merge/deletion capability to your devices! For some of you, not a moment too soon! 🤯



On your Mac, make sure you’ve update to macOS 13.1. Once that’s complete, open the Photos App, if you have duplicates, you’ll see a “Duplicate” option on the left Favorites Bar under Imports and above Recently deleted. Click the Duplicate option and you’ll see all your duplicate photos (hopefully not too many 😂

On your iPhone and iPad make sure you’re at the most recent iOS (16.2). Once complete, open Photos, on the bottom toolbar, click Albums, scroll down to the bottom and if you have duplicate photos, you’ll see an option under Utilities titled Duplicates. Tap that, from there you’ll have the ability to select all duplicates (should you choose to) and delete them, or do them individually.


As always, I highly recommend updating your devices and keeping everything current! This will help with cleaning up some needed space.



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