How To Delete Duplicate Photos In Mac Photo Library

08.04.2020
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How To Delete Duplicate Photos In Mac Photo Library 4,1/5 5318 votes

To delete a photo from both the album and the Photos library, use Command + Delete or the Delete option in the right-click menu. Permanently delete photos on Mac Photos for macOS has Recently Deleted library to save the deleted photos for 30 days before the photos are permanently deleted. Dec 28, 2018  Duplicate photo finder for Mac: The best way to clear duplicates in Photos. How to delete duplicate photos on Mac with Gemini 2. First, you need to find duplicate photographs in your gallery. The Pictures folder contains your Photos library, so this should help you remove all the duplicate photos you have in there.

If you’re using the new Photos app on your Mac instead of the older iPhoto app, you most likely have a duplicate photo library floating around on your hard drive. For a lot of people, that could mean gigs and gigs of wasted storage space, especially on shared Macs with multiple migrated libraries.

Here’s how to check for multiple libraries and how to delete them…

Before deleting your old library: Make a backup

While the Photos app should have imported all your photos and videos just fine, I always recommend having backups handy. Perhaps you’ll delete an old photo by accident at some point and want it back later. If you have a copy of your old iPhoto library still handy, you can pull it form there as a last resort.

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I saved my old iPhoto library to my Dropbox account. You can of course use any service of your choice, or just drop it onto an external hard disk you have laying around. Regardless of how you do it, I’d highly recommend saving a copy before deleting it.

Once you’ve backed up your old iPhoto library (if you chose to do so), you can proceed with deleting it:

  1. Open a new Finder window on your Mac.
  2. Click on Pictures in the left hand navigation. If it isn’t there, just search for your pictures folder using Spotlight.
  3. You should see two libraries, one is your old iPhoto Library and one is your new Photos library.
  4. Move your iPhoto Library to your trash can and empty it.

Check the storage space on your Mac, you should notice that you have more storage space available. If you are on a shared Mac and have multiple user logins, everyone using the new version of Photos on that Mac should make sure they don’t also have duplicate libraries.

I’m not sure why Apple doesn’t create a process to delete old versions of libraries after migrating to Photos, but they should. Until that happens, you’ll have to delete your old library manually.

Give this tip a try and see how much storage space you were able to clear up. As you can see in the screens above, my old iPhoto library was over 30GB, which was definitely a healthy chunk of hard drive space that I now have back.

Your Mac storage tips?

This is one of many ways to regain storage space on your Mac without having to sacrifice losing data. But we know there are lots of others. What are some of your favorite Mac storage tips for recapturing space? We’ve love to hear them in the comments!

Update

A follower on Twitter referenced to me an article written on Six Colors pointing out that the library is actually hard-linked between versions. While this may be true when you first migrate, it seems that if you make any changes to any files and the libraries become different, splicing can and will occur.

To test this theory, I deleted my iPhoto library on my other Mac to see how much storage was freed up. For those wondering, my iPhoto library was 35.99 GB and my Photos library was 41.16 GB. You can see the before and after results on my hard disk space below. I was able to free up over 20 GB of space. So I’m not sure what I think about hard linking or how well it’s actually working between Photos and iPhoto.

Bottom line, if you’re short on storage space and you want to free some up, there’s really not much point in having two photo libraries floating around on your Mac. Hard linking or not, deleting the old library will free up space in almost every case.

We use iPhoto on Mac to store our precious pictures. As a photo library, it may have stored thousand of photos from multiple sources. Such as you imported them from mobile phones or downloaded them from the internet. So, duplicate photos are a common problem on Macs.

Sometimes these duplicate files are visible while other times they are hidden. No matter how these photos wind up on your computer, they're eating up valuable disk space, potentially slowing down your computer, and you will need to remove them. There are two ways to remove duplicate photos on Mac - a straightforward method and one way that is significantly more challenging. Let's take a look at each of these in more detail.

  • Way 1. How to Delete Duplicate Files On Mac Instantly - For All MacBooks and iMacs

1. How to Delete Duplicate Files On Mac Instantly - For All MacBooks and iMacs

The time needed: About 2 minutes.

Operation Difficulty: Very low.

The quickest and easiest way to remove duplicate photos on Mac, including all MacBooks and iMacs, is to download a professional software that will do this for you effortlessly. Because the iPhoto on Mac cannot detect duplicates automatically. Furthermore, sometimes these duplicate files are hidden, which means you cannot even find them by yourself. As such, you will need a software package to remove duplicate photos on Mac automatically!

Umate Mac Cleaner can quickly identify duplicate photos and delete them for you. This application is fast, easy-to-use, and has a substantial number of features.

  1. Advanced algorithm: It identifies the duplicate file using unique MD5 values.
  2. Automatic detection and classification: When you select the photos library as the directory to scan, it will show you all the duplicate files classified according to different format.
  3. Find and remove hidden files: Umate Mac Cleaner will even find and remove hidden files!
  4. One-click solution: You can eliminate all the duplicates in bulk with one mouse click, no matter how many files.
  5. Smart selection support: The smart selection feature can keep the original file for you in case of mistake deletion.
  6. 2- Minute Solution: The best part is that Umate Mac Cleaner can scan for and delete these duplicates in 2 minutes or less.

Umate Mac Cleaner is incredibly easy to use and arguably the best duplicate photo cleaner on Mac on the market today. The best part is that you can get started with this powerful application in just three steps!

  1. Download and start Umate Mac Cleaner.
  2. Select the 'Duplicate Files' tab on the left side. Enter the directory to scan and then click on the 'Scan' button.
  3. After scanning, the app will show you the original files as well as their duplicates at the same time and automatically tick off the duplicate ones for quick deletion. Then you can directly click 'Delete' button to confirm your request.

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It's as simple as deleting duplicate photos from your Mac in just three steps. Umate Mac Cleaner is your best choice whenever you want to clean up duplicate files on your Mac computer.

2. The Manual Way to Delete Photos on Mac - May Cost Many Hours

Time needed: At least 1-2 hours. It depends on how many photos you have.

Operation Difficulty: Very high.

Of course, it is possible to remove these files manually. You can always load up the Pictures folder and set the icon size to include the preview. You can then scan through each photo, looking for duplicates. If you have a minimal number of photos, this method might work. However, if you're like most people and have thousands or tens of thousands of pictures on your computer, this method is effectively so time-consuming.That it is impossible! Also, if you delete the original photo incorrectly and empty the trash, you will find that it is impossible to reverse that.

Manually delete duplicate files is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone. You can follow these steps to do it:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Go to the File menu and then choose 'New Smart Folder.'
  3. Click on the '+' button in the top-right corner.
  4. Select Search parameters: Kind, Date, Name, File type and others. You're looking for all files that have an image file type.
  5. Review each photo manually (if you have 10,000 photos, this will be an exceptionally long time!).
  6. Delete when you find a duplicate.

Some people recommend opening Finder and sorting by name so that you can see duplicate file names. Usually, these tips don't apply to photos because they are all in one folder and cannot have duplicate file names anyways (you can't have two files with the same name in the same folder).

How To Delete Duplicate Photos In Mac Photos

As such, while scanning your photos one-by-one to eliminate duplicate photos on Mac is technically possible, it's not the best way to go about it. Using software like Umate Mac Cleaner is faster and safer.

3. How To Stop Photos From Creating Duplicate Files In Mac OS X

After you clean your computer with Umate Mac Cleaner, you will likely want to stop Photos from creating these duplicate files in the future. Of course, you can always rerun the software, but prevention is often the best. That will ensure you never have duplicate photos eating up hard disk space.

How To Delete Duplicate Photos In Mac Photo Library Free

Typically duplicate photos accumulated due to a couple of reasons. The main one is that you have an automatic import happening (iCloud Photo Library, for example), and then you trigger a manual import. Just because the iPhoto on Mac cannot detect and identify the duplicated pictures, so the multiple ways to import photos can be the major reason for duplicated files accumulation on Mac. Usually, you can prevent this problem by sticking to one importing method.

The other way that duplicates can happen is through bugs in the Photos app. Unfortunately, no software is perfect, and the iPhoto app is notorious for getting confused and having issues. Sometimes these issues result in extra pictures going into your library. The photo library is also an application that takes up a larger percentage of Mac's total space because of the large amount of storage and a large amount of space taken up per photo or video. This makes it especially necessary to regularly clean up duplicate files on Mac iPhoto.

How To Delete Duplicate Photos In Mac Photo Library Download

Final Words

While you can eliminate duplicate photos on Mac manually, your best option will be to use Umate Mac Cleaner. With an intuitive interface and lightning-fast speed, it's sophisticated technology will identify duplicate files and automatically delete them for you. You'll safely preserve the original data and remove duplicate photos on Mac. In the process, you will potentially free up a significant amount of disk space.

Remove Duplicates From Photos Mac

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