One question. How much tike does it need to scan and find the duplicates. I imported 120 gb and its been 4 hours but still no duplicate found. Great video btw
Oh - I should have mentioned that in the video. It takes a couple days ... it all happens behind the scenes while your Mac is on and not actively in use. So give it a good amount of time. Even a week... it's just not quick to find them.
I just subscribed to you channel, so glad I found you. Could you possibly cover scanning older photos into the photos app and identifying people, changing date, etc. It is a painstaking process.
Thank you for a clear and concise explanation. I followed instructions as per you and all worked well- except for my Mac. When I restarted my computer the duplicates were still there ….. It’s probably me. Is there something I may have overlooked?
I’m not entirely sure… The first thing I would want to see is if you do the duplicate cleaning the way I show in the video, do you actually get to a point that the duplicates section is empty? And then when you restart your computer they all come back? When you tell it to merge all the duplicates it would take quite a while so you need to give it time to finish that until the duplicates section is empty.
This a great! I am also very very picky! Another method of verifying photos are the same is using command "i" to bring up the info panel while toggling between similar photos. Here you can verify the dates, type, size, camera details etc. are the same
Great video! I recently completed importing thousands of photos from Aperture to Photos. I have many, many duplicates - I think as a result of my using file re-naming on import to Aperture. I am noticing that the photos coming from Aperture (and re-named and tagged) have a significantly larger (4X) file size that the original photo that sat in Photos. Is this normal? Photos is consistently keeping the larger file size when comparing similars.
I think that would be normal if the full quality originals (raw) went into Aperture and somehow you got lower quality jpegs imported into iPhoto -> Photos app. But it's hard to say without seeing your setup and going back in time to see all the steps you took along the way. I wouldn't worry about it... if the duplicate cleaning is keeping the bigger better file then great! :) - Lucas
I have two questions: I am considering using icloud to consolidate my Mac and iphone photos. i hv 50K photos in phone and 88K photos in Mac Photos now. I think maybe 30K photos are overlapp (i airdrop photos from phone to mac, so i can arrange albums). First question: I think if i enable icloud photos in both devices, the 30K duplicated photos will be recognized, right? Second: if I decided to merge them, do you know whether the photos in Phone or in Mac would be deleted? (personally i tend to delete the copies in iPhone because I am intended to use Mac as central point. Mac will download all originals and Phone will use "optimized" storage)
My quick thoughts but this probably should be a 30 minute conversation: iCloud Photos will be able to tell when it’s the same photo you airdropped so you won’t get 30k duplicates when you turn on iCloud Photo Library on Mac then iPhone. I think in your shoes I would not turn on iCloud on both devices at once… do the Mac first if that’s where you’ve made the albums. Then wait for that all to upload fully. Then turn it on on the phone. I didn’t fully understand your second question... once iCloud has the full set of photos there isn’t a difference between Mac photos and phone photos. You would just have one… and even if there’s a duplicate the Mac will keep the better one of the two. Like if the Mac has the HEIC but the iPhone has a JPG then the duplicate merge will favor the HEIC. If you want me to look at it and help you plan / test let me know. Just book a time from my calendar: macinhome.com/booking/ it’s $75 ish per half hour. - Lucas
Hi Macinhome, nice video. Out of curiosity, when you first tried to merge duplicates, did it give you a gentle error message? When I go to merge a couple exact duplicates, it returns a window which says in bold, "Unable to Merge Duplicates" and underneath it says, "Duplicate photos cannot be merged at this time". My best guess is that I haven't given the Photos app enough time to process the entire library in the background, but it seems strange that it would present a significant list (1000s) and not let you begin merging... I'll report back with a comment tomorrow if leaving it to process in the background overnight does the trick.
That’s a new one I haven’t seen before… I don’t think it’s related to the photos app needing time. I’ve merged duplicates before the photos app was done tallying a few times in the past. I would wonder about the health of the Mac in general… try a restart maybe. Was the Mac software imported from a previous Mac? That can sometimes bring in problems. Let me know if you want a hand, I can have a look. - Lucas
This is fantastic - I've been waiting since 2013 for this to happen - I had several albums full of unintentional duplicates from back when I was using camera cards! And the nice thing is that even though my iMac hasn't updated yet, but my iPhone 12 mini has, and then the deletions synced on all my devices (because I store the photos on the cloud, I guess).
Problem right out of the gate! I clicked on the photo icon just like you and DONT see "Duplicates" in the left hand columb. My MAC book has the latest version, BIG Sur with no available updates. Why don't I see "Duplicates"? Does this apply to macbook pro?
If you don’t have any updates available after Big Sur then you won’t be able to use this duplicate scanner I am talking about… This just means your Mac is older and the latest it can have is Big Sur. You would need a newer Mac to be able to do macOS Ventura.
@Macinhome Mac Consulting - Apple Certified Consultants Thabk you.... and you are 1000% correct. I just confirmed with Apple support my MAC pro has been deemed 'Vintage' 😭 Thanks for all your help..... going shopping
Perfect information for me right now as I am working on my 65,000 photos and videos right now. Lots and lots of duplicates that seem to have self generated! But doing batch is worrisome because some have had minor face app or photoshop modifications and it’s hard to tell at a glance. Additionally, the original file name may be different because I like to name all my photos with XXXX-XX-XX year/month/day before I import them, but a duplicate may have the original IMG_XXXX number and I don’t know which name it will choose😬.
Do some controlled tests... make two albums and put one photo into each album. Do the merge. See what you are left with. If you aren't happy with the decisions then pull the merged photo out of the "deleted items".
Hello, thanks for the great video, I just subscribed to your channel. I'm also very picky about my photos library , its 240 gigs in size, I have been a photographer guy all my life more than 50 years, first camera was a Brownie, second one was a Kodak Retina 2C with fantastic German lens. I also shot a variety of Hasselblad's SWC, ArcBody, 500cms, etc in medium 6x6 and 6x4.5 also 35 mm and others. I still use my Canon EOS 1DS mk iii and my new iPhone 15 pro max and a Fuji X100. On the photos app in Sonoma, I was not sure about the merge command when it said merge 1600, i did not know it what it was going to do, ie, put all 1700 into just one picked photo, Apples wording is not very clear on this. That said, I have left my library open on my Mac not allowing it to sleep and I still have thousands of Duplicates that the OS Sonoma photos app does not see as duplicates, is there a hidden command or something to get this feature to go find all the other dups? Thanks for your help. Reg
Great to meet you! There is no command I know of to prompt the Photos app / library to find more duplicates. The best I've found is get them all syncing properly in iCloud between Mac and iPhone, then wait a few weeks. It's a thing that happens behind the scenes and relies on machine learning (AI) as well, as part of iCloud. - Lucas
If one cant upgrade to ventura, what can be done to remove duplicate pics?. (Without downloading and paying for a expensive app to do it)
One question. How much tike does it need to scan and find the duplicates. I imported 120 gb and its been 4 hours but still no duplicate found. Great video btw
Oh - I should have mentioned that in the video. It takes a couple days ... it all happens behind the scenes while your Mac is on and not actively in use. So give it a good amount of time. Even a week... it's just not quick to find them.
I’ve also found that. Apple photos is not finding all my duplicates even after 3 weeks and not running Apple photos in the background.
I just subscribed to you channel, so glad I found you. Could you possibly cover scanning older photos into the photos app and identifying people, changing date, etc. It is a painstaking process.
Thank you for a clear and concise explanation. I followed instructions as per you and all worked well- except for my Mac. When I restarted my computer the duplicates were still there …..
It’s probably me. Is there something I may have overlooked?
I’m not entirely sure… The first thing I would want to see is if you do the duplicate cleaning the way I show in the video, do you actually get to a point that the duplicates section is empty? And then when you restart your computer they all come back? When you tell it to merge all the duplicates it would take quite a while so you need to give it time to finish that until the duplicates section is empty.
This a great! I am also very very picky! Another method of verifying photos are the same is using command "i" to bring up the info panel while toggling between similar photos. Here you can verify the dates, type, size, camera details etc. are the same
Great video! I recently completed importing thousands of photos from Aperture to Photos. I have many, many duplicates - I think as a result of my using file re-naming on import to Aperture. I am noticing that the photos coming from Aperture (and re-named and tagged) have a significantly larger (4X) file size that the original photo that sat in Photos. Is this normal? Photos is consistently keeping the larger file size when comparing similars.
I think that would be normal if the full quality originals (raw) went into Aperture and somehow you got lower quality jpegs imported into iPhoto -> Photos app. But it's hard to say without seeing your setup and going back in time to see all the steps you took along the way. I wouldn't worry about it... if the duplicate cleaning is keeping the bigger better file then great! :)
- Lucas
I have two questions: I am considering using icloud to consolidate my Mac and iphone photos. i hv 50K photos in phone and 88K photos in Mac Photos now. I think maybe 30K photos are overlapp (i airdrop photos from phone to mac, so i can arrange albums). First question: I think if i enable icloud photos in both devices, the 30K duplicated photos will be recognized, right? Second: if I decided to merge them, do you know whether the photos in Phone or in Mac would be deleted? (personally i tend to delete the copies in iPhone because I am intended to use Mac as central point. Mac will download all originals and Phone will use "optimized" storage)
My quick thoughts but this probably should be a 30 minute conversation: iCloud Photos will be able to tell when it’s the same photo you airdropped so you won’t get 30k duplicates when you turn on iCloud Photo Library on Mac then iPhone. I think in your shoes I would not turn on iCloud on both devices at once… do the Mac first if that’s where you’ve made the albums. Then wait for that all to upload fully. Then turn it on on the phone. I didn’t fully understand your second question... once iCloud has the full set of photos there isn’t a difference between Mac photos and phone photos. You would just have one… and even if there’s a duplicate the Mac will keep the better one of the two. Like if the Mac has the HEIC but the iPhone has a JPG then the duplicate merge will favor the HEIC. If you want me to look at it and help you plan / test let me know. Just book a time from my calendar: macinhome.com/booking/ it’s $75 ish per half hour.
- Lucas
I'm gonna transfer all my files from pc to Mac to take advantage of this. Such an amazing time saver!
Doooo iiiiit
how can i add the size off the pic on it as u have in duplicate ?
This is great video which solved a lot of questions in my head. Thanks a lot!
Awesome - you are welcome! :)
Hi Macinhome, nice video. Out of curiosity, when you first tried to merge duplicates, did it give you a gentle error message? When I go to merge a couple exact duplicates, it returns a window which says in bold, "Unable to Merge Duplicates" and underneath it says, "Duplicate photos cannot be merged at this time". My best guess is that I haven't given the Photos app enough time to process the entire library in the background, but it seems strange that it would present a significant list (1000s) and not let you begin merging... I'll report back with a comment tomorrow if leaving it to process in the background overnight does the trick.
That’s a new one I haven’t seen before… I don’t think it’s related to the photos app needing time. I’ve merged duplicates before the photos app was done tallying a few times in the past. I would wonder about the health of the Mac in general… try a restart maybe. Was the Mac software imported from a previous Mac? That can sometimes bring in problems. Let me know if you want a hand, I can have a look.
- Lucas
This is fantastic - I've been waiting since 2013 for this to happen - I had several albums full of unintentional duplicates from back when I was using camera cards! And the nice thing is that even though my iMac hasn't updated yet, but my iPhone 12 mini has, and then the deletions synced on all my devices (because I store the photos on the cloud, I guess).
This is great news! Love to hear it
Problem right out of the gate! I clicked on the photo icon just like you and DONT see "Duplicates" in the left hand columb.
My MAC book has the latest version, BIG Sur with no available updates. Why don't I see "Duplicates"? Does this apply to macbook pro?
If you don’t have any updates available after Big Sur then you won’t be able to use this duplicate scanner I am talking about… This just means your Mac is older and the latest it can have is Big Sur. You would need a newer Mac to be able to do macOS Ventura.
@Macinhome Mac Consulting - Apple Certified Consultants Thabk you.... and you are 1000% correct. I just confirmed with Apple support my MAC pro has been deemed 'Vintage' 😭
Thanks for all your help..... going shopping
According to my iPhone (14 Pro Max) it is up to date, but I don't have the duplicate option on the list under Albums.
Do you know how long ago you did the update? You would need iOS 16 or later. And you’d need to have it for a while for duplicates to be identified.
Perfect information for me right now as I am working on my 65,000 photos and videos right now. Lots and lots of duplicates that seem to have self generated! But doing batch is worrisome because some have had minor face app or photoshop modifications and it’s hard to tell at a glance. Additionally, the original file name may be different because I like to name all my photos with XXXX-XX-XX year/month/day before I import them, but a duplicate may have the original IMG_XXXX number and I don’t know which name it will choose😬.
Do some controlled tests... make two albums and put one photo into each album. Do the merge. See what you are left with. If you aren't happy with the decisions then pull the merged photo out of the "deleted items".
I'm also happy to work with you one on one! Book anytime: macinhome.com/booking/
- Lucas
THANK YOU!!! GREAT HELP!!!
Thanks man! Great to see you here!
- Lucas
Hello, thanks for the great video, I just subscribed to your channel. I'm also very picky about my photos library , its 240 gigs in size, I have been a photographer guy all my life more than 50 years, first camera was a Brownie, second one was a Kodak Retina 2C with fantastic German lens. I also shot a variety of Hasselblad's SWC, ArcBody, 500cms, etc in medium 6x6 and 6x4.5 also 35 mm and others. I still use my Canon EOS 1DS mk iii and my new iPhone 15 pro max and a Fuji X100. On the photos app in Sonoma, I was not sure about the merge command when it said merge 1600, i did not know it what it was going to do, ie, put all 1700 into just one picked photo, Apples wording is not very clear on this. That said, I have left my library open on my Mac not allowing it to sleep and I still have thousands of Duplicates that the OS Sonoma photos app does not see as duplicates, is there a hidden command or something to get this feature to go find all the other dups? Thanks for your help. Reg
Great to meet you! There is no command I know of to prompt the Photos app / library to find more duplicates. The best I've found is get them all syncing properly in iCloud between Mac and iPhone, then wait a few weeks. It's a thing that happens behind the scenes and relies on machine learning (AI) as well, as part of iCloud.
- Lucas
Thank you so much!!!!!!❤