You Can Finally Delete Duplicate Photos on IPhone Without a Third Party App
The Photos app is getting a lot of updates with iOS 16 . Between iCloud’s shared media library and the new batch editing feature, it’s easy to overlook the smaller, better features that are making their way to your iPhones and iPads. The new Duplicates album is one such feature. Apple now automatically scans your library for duplicate or near-similar photos, helping you get rid of seven different coffee cup photos taken while visiting your local coffee shop.
The new Duplicate interface lets you select and merge multiple photos together (if you’ve merged contacts in the past, this feature will be familiar to you). Apple promises that photo merging combines all the important data like captions, keywords and favorites into one highest quality photo (at least according to the company). Also, albums containing duplicate photos will be updated with the merged copy.
Note . This feature is only available on devices running iOS 16, which is currently available as a public beta .
How to Merge Duplicate Photos Together in iOS 16
To get started, open the Photos app on your iPhone, then go to the Albums tab. Scroll all the way down and in the Utilities section, click on the new Duplicates option.
You will see a list of duplicate photos and videos, each in its own section. Click the “Merge” button next to the set of duplicate photos (there can be two, there can be seven) and confirm by clicking the ” Merge duplicates ” button. Apple will keep one real photo, and the rest will be moved to the Recently Deleted album, which will be empty after 30 days.
If, like us, you have a lot of duplicate photos, you can click the ” Select ” button to select multiple photos to merge. Then click the ” Merge (N) ” button on the bottom bar, select the ” Merge Duplicates ” option in the pop-up window, and all selected photos will be merged.
Your iPhone will automatically delete duplicate photos after 30 days, but we recommend that you speed up the process and reclaim valuable storage space. Go to ” Albums ” > ” Recently Deleted ” > ” Select ” > ” Delete All ” > ” Delete Photos ” to get rid of everything in the trash.