• Today David is going to teach you how to remove duplicate photos from your Mac's Photos Library using PowerPhotos. Download PowerPhotos (Use Promo Code: TECH.
• To delete duplicate photos from your Mac, using Duplicate File Finder, complete the following steps: Launch Duplicate File Finder. Click on the Choose Folder button → select Photos Library from the menu that appears → click on the Scan button to search for duplicate pictures. In the next moment, you will see a list of all your equal.

1. Windows 10 Delete Duplicate Photos
2. How To Delete Duplicate Photos

Its Free version has options to view all the duplicate photos in the Mac, get a visual report, check the cleanup hints, and even delete the duplicate files in the Trash. When the Pro version is being discussed, this duplicate photo remover mac software offers to remove similar photos, merge folders and even restore the removed duplicates. Follow this procedure to delete duplicate photos on your Mac: Launch Disk Drill. Select Find duplicates. Drag and drop or add folders to the list to be searched. Click the Scan button in the upper right to locate duplicate images; Select Pictures to filter the scan results to show duplicate photos. Choose the files to be deleted and click Remove.

If you shoot as much as the next photographer, most of your hard drive is taken over by pictures. Now, try to imagine how many of them are duplicate photos or just visually really-really similar? Chances are, the answer is a lot.

With a digital camera, you shoot about 10-15 takes from one angle or of one posture before you’re satisfied, right? And then you only choose one for editing. That’s 14 pictures that you will never need right there, and that’s every scene of every photoshoot.

You must already be thinking about getting an external hard drive or buying cloud storage and moving your gallery, because your Mac’s space is not infinite. Or you might have already done that. Anyway, in the long run, billions of photos you no longer need keep piling up and it seems like there’s no escape from it. But worry not, there is.

How to find duplicate photos on Mac

Finding duplicate photos on your Mac can be tedious and time-consuming. Especially if you’re trying to do that manually. But the problem with duplicate and visually similar photos is so commonplace that here at MacPaw we created Gemini 2, the duplicate photo finder. Let’s take a closer look at how you can sort your photos, both manually and with the help of the app.

1. Use a duplicate photo finder to clean up your Photos

First, you need to find duplicate photographs in your gallery. Then you have to figure out which version to delete in each case. All that takes loads of time if done manually, and Gemini 2 does 90% of the work for you.

To find duplicate photos on your Mac, do the following:

1. Download Gemini for free and launch it
2. Click Scan for Duplicates. Your Home folder is pre-selected, so Gemini 2 will check all files on your Mac.
3. When the scan is over, hit Review Results
4. All the duplicate photos you have on your Mac will be grouped under All Duplicates > Images. Click on the group of photos to view them (Gemini has a built-in photo preview).

Bonus tip: If you switch to grid view using the icon at the top, you’ll see bigger previews of duplicate photos. Double click on a group of duplicates to see all copies side-by-side, along with their metadata and location. The icons at the top will highlight the differences between the duplicates, such as location or date modified.

5. Once you choose which copies you want to delete, check mark them and proceed to the next set of duplicate images by using those little arrows on the sides.
6. Finally, click Smart Cleanup to delete all selected photos. And don’t worry, Gemini moves pics to a separate Gemini Duplicates album in Photos, so you can look through them once again before you give the final “Delete” command. That’s because Apple won’t let any third-party app delete anything from the Photos library.

If you think you have too many files in your Home folder and want to focus on pictures, try scanning just the Photos app. Here’s how to find duplicates in Apple’s Photos app:

1. Download Gemini for free and launch it
2. Click Restart Now, and then the big “+” in the middle of the screen
3. Select the Pictures folder and hit Scan for Duplicates
4. Follow steps 4-6 from the tutorial above

The Pictures folder contains your Photos library, so this should help you remove all the duplicate photos you have in there.

How to get rid of not-quite-duplicate photos

Once you have duplicates off your Mac, it’s time to take a look at similar photos. See, Gemini distinguishes between exact duplicate photos, which are several instances of the same image, and similars — photos that have different editing or were shot at slightly different angles.

For instance, here are two pictures with and without editing, in the same folder. Gemini will find them for you and mark as similar.

Or here are three pictures that were taken a second apart. You definitely don’t need all three, unless you’re going for an art-housy installation on majestic horse breathing.

To see all the similar photos the app has found, look right next to the duplicates in your left-hand menu.

Go through similar shots just like you did with exact duplicate pictures, selecting those you want to delete. When you’re done, click Remove and delete all unwanted copies in bulk.

Dealing with similars is pretty rewarding in terms of disk space, they usually take up even more than duplicates. After you get rid of similar images it's easy to organize your whole gallery and leave only those pictures that you’ll actually use.

2. Remove duplicates from Photos manually

When you import your pictures, the Photos app automatically detects duplicates, but it won’t help you with the ones already in your library. For those images already in your photo library, you’ll have to take a more manual approach.

It’s safe to assume most of your duplicates were taken at the same time, or at least on the same day. Thankfully, the Photos app, by default, sorts your pics by the date they were captured, making duplicate photos a little easier to spot as you’re scrolling through your library.

But if you’re still having trouble finding all of your duplicates, you can further narrow down your search by using Smart Albums. You can filter your pictures by filename, camera model, lens type, and other criteria to help you figure out if a photo has been duplicated. Follow these steps to start using Smart Albums in Photos:

1. Open the Photos App.
2. Click File > New Smart Album.
3. In the pop-up window, name your Smart Album and set the filter criteria.
4. Select the pictures you want to delete.
5. Right-click (or hold down Command and click) on any of those images and click Delete.
6. A window will pop up. Click Delete to confirm.
7. In the sidebar, click Recently Deleted.
8. Click Delete All in the top right corner.

Smart Albums are saved in the Photos app's sidebar, so you can return to your cleanup at any time and pick up right where you left off. Which you’ll find helpful if you have quite a few duplicates to go through.

3. Find duplicate photos on Mac in Finder

It’s normal for your Mac to fill up with duplicate files of all types, especially images. Sometimes you edit a photo and save versions of your edits. Or you download the same image from an email multiple times. And because of that, you might not always find your photos in your Pictures folder. They can be spread all over your hard drive from your Downloads folder to your Desktop.

Thankfully, you can set up Smart Folders in Finder to help you find and get rid of duplicates regardless of the specific folder they’re in. To use Smart Folders in Finder to find duplicates:

1. Open a Finder window.
2. Click File > New Smart Folder.
3. Make sure This Mac is selected.
4. Click the + in the top-right corner.
5. Change the first drop-down menu to Kind and the second one to Image.
6. Click on the Name column to sort your files by name. (It’s likely that duplicate images will have identical or consecutive names.)
7. Select the duplicate photos you want to delete.
8. Right-click (or hold down Command and click) on any of those images and click Move to Trash.

One of the best ways you can try to prevent duplicates is to import your pictures directly into the Photos app. As you read earlier, it automatically detects duplicate images as you import them. But if the pictures are already in your photo library, then that’s when you’ll need one of the methods mentioned above.

The nice thing about manually removing pictures with Smart Folders in Finder is that you’ll be able to find and remove pics across your entire hard drive, not just the ones in the Photos app. But obviously, the more images you have on your computer, the longer it will take for you to review them one-by-one.

However, that’s where Gemini 2 really excels. It does all the hard work of finding the duplicate and similar-looking images on your computer for you. So, instead of manually finding and deleting them, you just need to review the selections made by Gemini 2.

Final word on removing duplicate photos

We all know that euphoric state in which you return home with an SD-card full of new pictures. We’ve all been there, editing feverishly to publish or print them right away. It’s ok to be a little messy in that moment, but months later you notice that your whole Mac is a mess.

Don’t let those useless files eat up the drive space you need for future photoshoots. There’s nothing more frustrating than the “Startup Disk is almost full” alert when you’re uploading new pictures. It’s best to let Gemini 2 deal with space wasters long before that happens.

Have a good day and may the Photoshop be with you.

Want to organize the digital photo collection on your Mac? You can start by removing the duplicates! It’s possible but not practical to manually find and delete duplicate photos on Mac, especially if you have tons of photos. That’s why you need the best duplicate photo finder for Mac.

There are a number of apps to help Mac users get rid of duplicate images. They vary in performance, safety, features, ease of use, etc. What is the best Mac software to remove photo duplicates? Here are 8 great apps to consider, including free ones.

Easily Delete Duplicate Photos on Mac

Use Cisdem Duplicate Finder.

• Find duplicate photos, videos, audios and any other duplicate files
• Find similar images as well
• Support removing duplicate photos from Photos, iPhoto and folders
• Display the found duplicates with file info and side-by-side preview
• Automatically and smartly select duplicates to mass delete with 1 click
• Also offer selection rules to customize the selection
• Provide 3 deletion methods, including Move to Trash
• Easy and safe to use
• Help you free up storage space
• Compatible with macOS 10.10 or later

6 criteria to evaluate a Mac duplicate photo finder

Ability to find true duplicates: It should find duplicate photos based on content rather than filename (only).

Support for Apple Photos: Duplicates in Photos app can be the main source of duplicate photos on Mac. When dealing with them, you should use a duplicate photo finder safely designed for Photos. A regular one can’t do the job.

Preview feature: A preview feature is necessary so that you can conveniently view the duplicate pictures you are handling and deleting.

Safe removal: It should show warning before deleting and allow you to delete duplicates by moving them to Trash. This helps prevent or restore an accidental deletion.

Ease of use: The best duplicate photo finder for Mac should offer a good balance between features and ease of use.

Flexibility to customize: Users should have enough control over the identification and removal of duplicate images.

With these basic criteria in mind, we tested over a dozen of popular apps for duplicate image removal and picked the best ones including the best free duplicate photo finder for Mac.

The best duplicate photo finder for Mac 2021

#1 Cisdem Duplicate Finder

Compatibility: macOS 10.10 or later

Latest version: 5.10.0, released in September 2021

Cisdem Duplicate Finder is picked as the best Mac duplicate photo finder due to its high performance, safety, ease-of-use and customization.

The app can safely find and delete the duplicate photos in Photos app and folders. You can use it to get rid of all types of duplicate files such as duplicate images, videos, audios, documents, archives, etc. on your Mac and external storage devices.

With advanced algorithms and support for most image formats (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, PSD, CR2, etc.), the app accurately and quickly finds true duplicate photos by content. It can also identify near duplicate photos, grouping them together for you to easily pick the best shots to keep.

Designed to support Apple Photos for Mac, Cisdem Duplicate Finder scans your Photos for duplicates, displays the scan results, auto-selects duplicates for deletion, and bulk deletes selected duplicates by moving them to Recently Deleted in Photos. It performs the task safely, like a human would do, but far more efficiently.

Its smart auto-select feature decides for you which ones to keep and which ones to remove, saving you from manually selecting. Or, you can choose a desired selection rule or select/deselect by hand.

Pros

1. Find duplicate pictures and all other duplicate files
2. Capable of scanning a large photo collection for duplicates
3. Designed for macOS, ensuring safe removal of duplicates from Photos, iPhoto, Music and iTunes
4. Work with Mac, external hard drive, SD card, cloud storage, etc.
5. Provide 3 preview modes
6. Automatically select duplicates for 1-click removal
7. Also let you choose a selection rule or select manually
8. Offer 3 removal methods: Move to Trash, Move to Folder and Remove Permanently
9. Let you customize what to find and how to delete

#2 Easy Duplicate Finder

Compatibility: macOS 10.6 or later

Latest version: 7.11.0.27, released in July 2021

In addition to the best duplicate photo finder for Mac recommended above, there are other choices to check out.

This duplicate file finder is smart enough to detect duplicate files by content rather than filename. It can help you get rid of the photo duplicates on your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac, etc. With support for most popular image formats, it finds duplicate JPG photos, duplicate PNG photos and more.

Easy Duplicate Finder offers multiple modes to scan your Mac for duplicate pictures and other duplicate files. Once it finishes scanning, its Auto Remove feature can help you eliminates duplicates with a click. But it’s more reliable to use the Manual Review feature, which lets you conveniently view the duplicate photos that have been found.

Pros

1. Find duplicate images, videos, music files and more on a Mac
2. Also support cloud storage
3. Provide an image preview feature
4. Let you batch delete duplicates with the Auto Remove feature
5. Offer 2 ways to delete: Move to the Trash and Delete Permanently
6. Provide an Undo button to instantly undo deletion
7. Offer a useful Wizard tool
8. User friendly with an easy to understand interface

Cons

1. Can’t preview images side by side
2. A little bit expensive

#3 Gemini 2

Compatibility: macOS 10.10 or later

Latest version: 2.8.0, released in January 2021

With a beautiful interface and useful features, Gemini 2 helps users locate the duplicate photos on their Macs and makes it easy to get rid of the located duplicates. In addition to photo files, it supports other common file types.

Designed to be simple, the app is easy to use. After it finishes finding duplicate photos, you can easily review them in the results window. There, duplicates are displayed in groups. To offer a good user experience, it lets you sort duplicates by size or filename etc.

Go through each group and select the unwanted duplicates for removal. To avoid manual selecting, you can use the Select Duplicates feature. But note that the mass selection is not customizable.

Pros

1. Help you clean up duplicate photos and other duplicates
2. Also capable of finding photos that look alike
3. Offer a Remove feature to directly delete all duplicates at once
4. Also let you view duplicates before deleting
5. Allow you to easily preview images, videos and more
6. Provide a Duplicates Monitor feature to help prevent duplicate files
7. Easy to use with a simple and good looking interface

Cons

1. Can be a little CPU hungry during scan
2. A bit costly

#4 PhotoSweeper

Compatibility: macOS 10.12.2 or later

Latest version: 4.1.0, released in August 2021

As its name suggests, the app is a dedicated duplicate photo finder. Designed to handle image files, PhotoSweeper fully supports all popular image formats and a few RAW formats. The support for RAW photos is a benefit for photographers particularly.

The duplicate photo finder for Mac is capable of finding almost all the exact duplicate photos in a folder you specify. It can also scan a location on your Mac for similar photos. Due to the algorithm used to compare images and identify duplicates, the speed may be a little slow sometimes.

If the app crashes or freezes when scanning a large photo library or folder, don’t worry. Quit or force quit the app. Relaunch it and perform the scan again.

Pros

1. Scan your Mac for duplicate photos and videos
2. Also identify photos that are not quite the same
3. Support all popular image files including RAW ones
4. Come with an useful Auto Mark tool
5. Offer 3 preview modes
6. Offer a rich set of basic and advanced settings and options

Cons

1. Overwhelming interface
2. Can’t test full features without paying

#5 Duplicate Photo Cleaner

Compatibility: macOS 10.6 or later

Latest version: 7.0.0.6, released in August 2021

Dedicated to locating the duplicate image files on a Mac for users to bulk delete, Duplicate Photo Cleaner supports many image formats including some RAW formats.

It’s highly customizable. For example, you can set it to scan only specific formats of images for duplicates. You have full control over what duplicates to find and where to find.

This duplicate photo finder for Mac can find photos that are identical or nearly identical (such as visually similar photos). It lets you adjust the Similarity Threshold value to get more desired scan results. Note that it sometimes freezes when scanning.

It is designed in a way that you need to select the undesired duplicates in order to delete them. Do it manually one by one. Or, use one of the provided selection rules.

Pros

1. User-friendly with a simple interface
2. Find both identical and similar images
3. Support all popular image formats
4. Also support certain RAW images
5. Offer a useful built-in preview feature
6. Provide multiple removal options

Cons

1. Sometimes fail to detect all duplicate photos
2. Require a lot of CPU usage when scanning
3. A little bit costly

#6 Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro

Compatibility: macOS 10.7 or later

Latest version: 3.3, released in June 2021

Lightweight and compact, it’s one of the best duplicate photo finders available for Mac users. You can use it to scan your Mac for photos that are exactly identical or almost identical. To look for duplicate images only, enable Exact Match mode. To find both duplicate and similar images, switch to Similar Matches mode.

Before a scan, you can configure settings in Preferences. For example, you can go to the Filter & Sort tab to exclude certain images from scan by file size or image format.

This photo duplicate finder will display duplicate photos in the scan results window in thumbnail view. When you highlight a photo, a preview will show up on the right.

Pros

1. Simple and useful interface
2. Intelligently identify almost duplicate photos and exact duplicates
3. Support Mac’s internal disk and external storage
4. Make it handy to select duplicates for elimination
5. Multiple filtering options

Cons

1. Not good at handling a lot of photos at a time
2. Incapable of finding all duplicates
3. Limitedly useful preview feature

#6 Photos Duplicate Cleaner (free)

Windows 10 Delete Duplicate Photos

Compatibility: macOS 10.7 or later

Latest version: 2.6, released in March 2021

If you are looking for the best free duplicate photo finder for Mac, this app can be a great choice. It’s free to use and update, always allowing you to remove duplicate pictures from Mac for free. Despite being freeware, it’s updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and add support for newer macOS versions.

You can add multiple individual photos to scan, letting Photos Duplicate Cleaner to identify the duplicates in them. A more common way is to add a folder to scan. It can also scan the Photos library.

When used to scan the same Mac for duplicates, this free app can’t find as many duplicates as its commercial counterparts do. The scan speed is also slower. Once the scan is done, you can preview and remove duplicates as you wish.

Pros

1. Free to use
2. Find photos that are duplicated on Mac
3. Provide built-in preview and display photo metadata
4. Safely remove duplicates by moving them to Trash

Cons

1. Can’t find all duplicates
2. Slow scanning
3. Sometimes crash
4. Low level of customization

#8 dupeGuru for Mac (free)

Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later

Latest version: 4.0.3, released in 2016

Another best duplicate photo finder Mac free app is dupeGuru. dupeGuru has been around since 2004. Users needed to pay to use it until 2010 when the developer Hardcoded Software announced that its apps became free and open source.

It used to offer the Picture Edition and the Music Edition. And later the functionalities from the two editions were packed in one app.

To use dupeGuru to locate and eliminate duplicate images on Mac, enable the Picture mode first. Alternatively, choose the Standard mode, which supports images and other types of files.

Pros

1. Free to use and open source
2. Support photos, audio files, video files and more
3. Can also detect certain similar photos
4. Provide three scan modes
5. Easy to customize

Cons

1. May damage your Photos library
2. Slow Picture mode
3. Crash when scanning a large photo collection
4. Can’ preview side by side

Above are the duplicate photo finder for Mac reviews and below is a comparison table.

Questions and answers

1. What does duplicate photos mean?

What are duplicate photos? Strictly speaking, they are photos that are exactly the same in every way regardless of filename.

There are also visually identical photos in different sizes and visually similar photos (e.g. pictures captured in burst mode, slightly edited photos, etc.). Some people also loosely refer to them as duplicate photos (or near duplicates or similar images).

2. Why are there duplicate photos on my Mac?

They can be created when you import or download the same photos twice or more, or when you copy (rather than cut) and paste photos, etc. You can have near duplicate photos if you use burst mode when shooting, or if you edit or compress photos a lot, etc.

Also sometimes Mac’s Photos app duplicates photos when importing, causing you to have JPEG versions and HEIC versions of the same photos. It can happen due to improper settings or app glitches.

3. What is the best photo duplicate finder for Mac?

Based on the reviews, Cisdem Duplicate Finder is the best. Both beginners and advanced users can use it to easily and efficiently get rid of duplicate photos on MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or iMac, etc.

4. How do you delete duplicate photos on Mac?

Step 1. Download Cisdem Duplicate Finder for Mac and install it. Open it.

Step 2. Click the plus icon to add your Photos library or a folder. Also, you can add multiple locations to find duplicates across them.

Step 3. Click Scan.

Step 4. Once the scan is done, the app will display all the duplicate photos found on your Mac. You can easily preview and view them.

Step 5. The app already automatically mass selects duplicates to delete at once. Or, you can select by hand or use a desired selection rule.

Step 6. Now the unwanted duplicate photos are selected. Click Delete to eliminate them with a click.

Step 7. Confirm the deletion.

One more step is needed to delete duplicate photos on Mac Photos app.

Conclusion

Duplicate photos are common. No matter the cause, the best practice is to get rid of them. This article lists 8 highly rated apps, including paid ones and free ones. They are designed to help you quickly and effortlessly find duplicate photos on Mac and remove unwanted copies.

I hope the article can help you pick the best duplicate photo finder for Mac. Your duplicate-free photo collection will become easier to browse and manage. Also, deduplication can help free up a lot of space on Mac.

How To Delete Duplicate Photos

Which duplicate picture finder you are using on Mac?