How to Use a Duplicate Photo Finder for Mac to Clean up Photo Library

There are two ways to store and manage photos on a Mac computer: using the Photos app and using folders. Using the Photos app is far more popular based on an educated guess. With either way, duplicate photos could be a common issue. In this article, I will show you how to use two different duplicate photo finders for Mac to clean up the duplicates in your photo library, covering both photos stored in the Photos app and those in folders.

Compare 2 duplicate photo finders for Mac

Although it’s totally possible to manually find and remove duplicate photos, it’s often wiser to use duplicate photo finder software since the manual method can be time-consuming and inefficient.

I’ve tried several tools that can be used to remove duplicate photos on Mac, including third-party apps and the one built in to macOS. In this article, I only talk about the best two: Cisdem Duplicate Finder and Mac’s Photos app. 

Mac’s Photos app: This app comes with every Mac, but only the Photos app on macOS Ventura or later has a built-in duplicate detection tool. This tool can find duplicate photos and certain very similar photos. However, there isn’t a way to mass delete duplicates. You need to handle them individually. This tool only handles duplicates in the Photos app. 

Cisdem Duplicate Finder: This is a third-party duplicate photo finder for Mac, which finds duplicate photos and similar ones. In addition, it finds duplicate videos, audio files, documents and other duplicate files. Duplicates are automatically selected for users to delete at once. It can handle the duplicate photos in the Photos app, folders and even on external storage devices. Unlike the tool mentioned above, this app is widely compatible. It’s available for OS X El Capitan - macOS Sonoma.

If the built-in tool is available for you, I suggest that you try it first. But note that you will need to wait a period of time (from hours to days or weeks) for the completion of detection of duplicate photos. If you are not happy with this tool, you can then try the recommended third-party app.

Part 1. How to use a third-party duplicate photo finder to remove duplicate photos on Mac

Since Cisdem Duplicate Finder is more widely supported and allows users to remove duplicate photos in bulk, this article talks about it first. 

Let’s first take a look at what this app can find.

• Duplicate photos, which are exactly the same (without consideration for their file names)
• Photos that look identical to the naked eye but have different sizes or formats
• Similar photos, such as similar-looking pictures taken by your phone or camera and burst mode photos
• Other duplicate files, such as duplicate video files

It can scan for duplicate photos in the following locations.

• Photos app on Mac
• Folders on Mac
• External storage devices, such as an external hard drive or an SD card
• In and across multiple places, such as between the Photos app and a folder

Below are the detailed steps.

Step 1. Download Cisdem Duplicate Finder and install it on your Mac. Open this app. 

Step 2. Click the Add button and then add the location(s) where you think duplicate photos exit.

To scan the Photos app for duplicates, you need to add the Photos Library, which is located in the Pictures folder.

Step 3. Optionally, navigate to the top right corner of the interface to click the gear icon and then configure the settings based on your needs.

If you want to find duplicate photos that are not exactly the same and similar photos in addition to exact duplicates, I suggest that you turn on the similar image function in settings. 

Step 4. Click the Scan button.

Step 5. When it’s complete, you will see the results window. There, you can see all the duplicate photos (and other duplicate files) and similar photos (if this function is turned on). They are categorized by file type and displayed separately in the corresponding tabs, such as Image, Document, and Music.

Step 6. In every group of duplicate photos, this app automatically selects the duplicate(s) for removal and the original photo stays unselected.

If you want to customize how this app identifies the original and the duplicate, you can use the selection rules it provides. For example, choosing the Select Newest selection rule means that the oldest photo will be considered the original. 

Step 7. Click the Delete button to remove all the selected files. Confirm the deletion by clicking the Yes button. 

If the duplicates are stored in folders, they will go to Trash after the deletion is done. If they are in the Photos app, they will go to the Recently Deleted album in Photos.

Part 2. How to find duplicate photos in Mac’s Photos app with the built-in tool

The native duplicate photo finder tool in the Photos app on Mac is an automatic one. Once it finishes looking for duplicate photos, it will display them in the Duplicates album, which is in the sidebar on the left. 

However, it can be common that a user has to wait for a long time until he or she sees duplicates in this album. Since it’s automatic, you can’t force a search for duplicates in Photos app. You will need to wait.

Step 1. Open the Photos app on your Mac. 

Step 2. Click Duplicates in the sidebar to open the Duplicates album.

Step 3. Check if duplicates appear in this album. If not, just wait. If there are duplicate photos, you can start handling them.

Step 4. There are two ways to remove duplicate photos.

• Click the Merge Items button next to each group of duplicates, which, in each group, will automatically keep one photo and delete the rest.
• In each group, automatically delete the photo(s) that you want to delete and keep the photo you want to keep untouched.

With either way, the deleted items will go to Recently Deleted.

Conclusion

Cleaning up the duplicate photos in your photo library can free up space and helps bring a smoother photo viewing experience. Thanks to duplicate photo finders for Mac, it can be easy and quick to remove duplicates from your photo collection. This article recommends two such tools. If you can’t decide which one to use, I recommend that you try both.

If you are sure that (most) duplicate photos on your Mac are created by you accidentally (such as importing or downloading the same photos twice or moving files by copying and pasting them), using a duplicate photo finder to get rid of the duplicates is enough. But sometimes, duplicate photos could be caused by something like your syncing settings or import methods. In such a case, you also need to identify and fix the cause to prevent duplicates from being created by this cause in the future.