Declutter By Deleting Duplicates

Whether you are on vacation, celebrating a birthday or even capturing a simple moment in your day-to-day life you probably take multiple pictures at a time. It's an easy way to make sure you have at least one great photo when posting to social media, printing a copy for your new frame or even when you need to find a winner for your family's holiday card at the end of the year. 

And because smartphone cameras make taking multiple shots at once so easy, you probably end up with hundreds of duplicates that create clutter and make navigating through your camera roll a little more tedious. 

Lucky for us, one of the more recent Apple updates added a tool that makes deleting duplicates incredibly easy! 

How to Delete Duplicates


Apple Users 

1. Open Apple Photos from your phone 
2. Click "Albums" at the bottom of your screen
3. Scroll down to the "Utilities" section and click on "Duplicates"
4. You can merge the photos one row at a time OR do it all at once, following the next few steps
5. Click "Select" in the top right corner
6. Click "Select All" in the top left corner
7. Click Merge "#" at the bottom of your screen
8. Choose either "Merge # Exact Copies Only" OR "Merge # items" to clean up ALL duplicates (Pick whatever you're most comfortable with. I merge all because it helps me quickly clean up my photos.) 

Once you delete duplicates, this section won't show up under Utilities until Apple Photos detects new duplicate photos in the future. 

Google Photos Users  

1. Open Google Photos from your phone 
2. Click "Photos" at the bottom of your screen
3. Scroll through and find multiple copies one set at a time
4. Unfortunatley, you will have to manually delete duplicates 

Deleting doubles every few months is a great way to clean up the pictures on your phone and, if you're an Apple user, all it takes is a few clicks!

All the best,

Melissa