Duplicate Photos on Your iPhone? Here’s How to Quickly Delete the Extras
Whether it’s a photo capturing an important memory or an ordinary moment, taking photos is a common habit. We often take several photos to get the perfect one and then forget to delete the duplicate photos, which ends up consuming precious storage space on iPhone or iCloud.
Luckily, if your iPhone has an easy way to fix this problem built into it iOS 16 Or later.
Apple launched the “Duplicate Detection” feature in 2022, which is exactly what the name suggests. The tool uses on-device artificial intelligence to identify identical images and aggregate them into easy-to-find albums in the Photos app. Apple says iPhone classifies duplicate photos not only as identical copies, but also as photos that appear to be the same but have unique resolutions, file formats, or other subtle differences.
Read more: iOS 18: Your iPhone will get upgraded messaging, photos and more this fall
Delete duplicate photos and videos to get more storage space on your iPhone.
Before following the step-by-step process below, make sure to turn on iCloud sync.
Here’s how to free up storage space using your iPhone’s built-in tools:
1. Open photo Apps on iPhone.
2. Click album tabs at the bottom of the screen.
3. scroll down to Utilities Sections and taps Duplicates. Here you can view all duplicate photos on your iPhone and delete them individually or all at once.
4. For the latter option, click choose in the upper right corner.
5. tap choose all Merge all duplicate photos detected by iPhone and delete them simultaneously.
6. If you want to remove duplicates individually, scroll up and tap merge on the duplicate image of your choice. Then click merge (number) copy Remove duplicates. Continue repeating this step for all the same photos you want to delete.
Merging keeps the best versions of your photos in your library. Duplicates were moved to recent Deleted album.
If you find this iOS 16 feature helpful, check out CNET iOS 17 Cheat Sheet. For more advice on how to save space, read our full list of tips Clear iPhone storage space.
