After a while, having duplicate photos on your iPhone can become a bit of a hassle. For one, they take up valuable storage space. Not to mention the fact they make it harder to find the pictures you actually want to look at.
Luckily, Apple has made it nice and easy to spot and delete these pesky duplicates. And we’re here to walk you through exactly how to do it. So, here’s how to remove duplicate photos on iPhone in a few quick steps…
Spotting duplicate photos using the Photos app
The ‘Photos’ app on your iPhone has a handy little feature called ‘Duplicates’. And lo and behold, it’s there to help you find duplicate images. Here’s how to use it:
Open the ‘Photos’ app. You should have an icon for it on your home screen.
Tap on the ‘Albums’ tab at the bottom of the screen.
Scroll down to the ‘Utilities’ section and press on ‘Duplicates’.
The app will then automatically scan your photo library and pull up any duplicate photos it finds.
This is ideal for a quick spring clean of your photo library, as it saves you the trouble of manually going through your camera roll photo by photo, which can take absolutely ages. Especially if you’ve got lots of holiday snaps and pet pics. We’re guilty of both…
Merging and deleting duplicate photos
Once you’ve found the duplicate photos, you can either merge or delete them. This is what you’ll need to do:
In the ‘Duplicates’ album, tap on ‘Select’ in the top right corner.
Select the ‘Duplicate’ photos you want to merge or delete.
Press on ‘Merge’ to combine the duplicates into a single photo. This option is useful if you’ve got multiple versions of the same picture with some slight differences.
If you’d prefer to delete the duplicates, hit the trash can icon in the bottom right corner.
Confirm the deletion by tapping on ‘Delete Photos’.
Follow these steps and you’ll tidy up your photo library in no time – freeing up some storage space and making it easy to find the photos you love.
Recovering photos from the ‘Recently Deleted’ album
Accidentally binned a photo? Don’t panic! The Photos app has a ‘Recently Deleted’ album where any deleted photos are stored for 30 days before they’re permanently wiped from your phone. It’s a life saver if you delete that group selfie from Saturday’s big night out by mistake.
Here’s how to recover them:
Open the ‘Photos’ app and go to the ‘Albums’ tab.
Scroll down to the ‘Utilities’ section and hit ‘Recently Deleted’.
Select the photos you want to recover.
Tap on ‘Recover’ in the bottom right corner.
Confirm the recovery by pressing ‘Recover Photos’.
Your photos will then be sent back to their original spot in your photo library.
Preventing duplicate photos in the future
To avoid doubling up on your photos in future, here are a few tips:
Use iCloud Photo Library – This keeps your photos and videos up to date across all of your devices. By syncing your photo library automatically, it helps to prevent any duplication without you lifting a finger.
Think about your photo backups – When you’re transferring photos from your computer to your iPhone, make sure you’re not duplicating photos that might already be on your device.
Regularly clean out your photo library – It can be a bit of a faff, but make it a habit to go through your photos and delete and duplicates or unwanted pics.
FAQs
How do I quickly delete duplicate photos on my iPhone?
Use the ‘Duplicates’ feature in your Photos app to quickly find and delete any samey photos. We’ve covered this step-by-step a few paragraphs back.
Can iPhone Photos detect duplicates?
It sure can. Like we’ve said above, the Photos app can detect duplicates using the built-in ‘Duplicates’ feature. It automatically scans your camera roll and tells you about any duplicate photos.
How does my iPhone merge duplicate photos?
When you select duplicate photos in the ‘Duplicates’ album and tap ‘Merge’, the Photos app combines them into one single pic. As we’ve mentioned already, it’s ideal when you’ve got a bunch of similar photos with some really minor differences. Just pick your favourite and you’re good to go.
So, that’s how to delete duplicate photos on iPhone and how to recover any recently deleted photos too. Need any other helpful hacks for your iPhone? You’re in the right place. If you’re running low, we’ve covered how to check data usage on an iPhone. And if you didn’t mean to remove those chats, we’ll show you how to retrieve deleted messages on iPhone. It’s super easy.
