My computer is up to date. I’m using high sierra. How can I get rid of duplicates in my photos? I have so many of them and it’s driving me crazy! Anybody have any easy ideas? I’m not very tech savvy, so please don’t assume I know more than I really do! Thank you for your help.
—–
Jan Marlow
MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum Questions • Ask a Question
How Do I Get Rid Of Duplicates In Photos?
Comments: One Response to “How Do I Get Rid Of Duplicates In Photos?”
Comments Closed.
The best way to get rid of them is manually. Why? Well, it is too important to try to use some automatic process. Photos, after all, are precious. And it really doesn't take as much time as you think.
First, I would make sure you are in Photos view, not viewing an album, memory, or something else. So click on Photos in the left sidebar. Next, look at the top of the window and you'll see Photos, Moments, Collections, Years. Click on Photos.
Now what you have is basically a long list of all of your photos in chronological order. This is great for deleting duplicates because any duplicate is going to have the exact same time stamp as the original. So they will all be right next to each other.
Use the slider next to the Red/Yellow/Green buttons at the top left to enlarge the photos so you can clearly seem them and make out which ones are duplicates. Now select the first one. Tap the "i" button at the top right of the window. Now you get the information for that photo in the Info window. Try using the right arrow to move to the next photo. Use the left to move back. It is easy to use the arrows to do this, and you'll see the Info window the time stamp, so even if you aren't sure about the photo, you'll see it is the same exact time. Maybe you'll even notice the filename above the time as something similar, like IMG_0678 and IMG_0678_1 or something like that. You may see a pattern there.
Now use the right arrow key to move forward, and press the Delete key when you want to delete a photo. You'll have to confirm, and the Return key will do that for you. So using the right arrow, Delete, and Return, you can do everything you need. If you ever make a mistake, you can always use Command+z to undo the Delete quickly without wasting too much time.
If you have a lot of photos, try to do a little here and there. Eventually you'll get them all.
Now, the important thing to do is to make sure this doesn't happen again. Try to figure out why you got duplicates and stop doing that behavior. The current Photos app does a lot to try to stop duplicates, catching them when you try to import them or sync them. So maybe these have been around for a while?