It’s a common problem that duplicate photos on your iPhone appear seemingly out of nowhere. Duplicate photos can be annoying since they take up huge storage on your device. If you’ve ever wondered how to delete duplicate photos on iPhone, you’re in the right place. This article from NewsPivot offers simple steps to troubleshoot this issue.

Reasons Why the Photos Keep Duplicating on iPhone

It is frustrating that your iPhone has duplicate photos or nearly identical pictures that take up the memory of your device, and you don’t know how they got there. Here are common causes for duplicate images.

You can read this post to manage the space on your Android: 4 Effective Methods to Fix Insufficient Storage Error Android.

Multiple Cloud Services

When your iPhone uses multiple cloud services, duplicate photos often appear. For instance, if you use both iCloud and Google Photos, the same photo might be uploaded to two different locations, creating duplicates. The best way to prevent duplicates due to multiple cloud services is to use only one automatic service on your iPhone.

HDR Is Turned on

HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a camera feature that produces sharper, and higher-contrast images by taking multiple shots and combining them into one. You can turn it on and off on older iPhones. When on, it creates two pictures: an HDR photo and the original photo.

So, you get two similar pictures. You can turn off this feature to prevent duplicates.

Photo Editing

If you use a third-party app to edit your photos, you’re likely to save duplicates. Pictures edited with a third-party app are saved back to your camera roll, creating a duplicate picture. You can choose to edit in the Photos app, as it can save the original picture by default to avoid the creation of duplicates.

Simple Ways to Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone

You can do the above things to prevent duplicate photos in the future, and you will be given detailed steps to remove duplicate images in this part. Please keep reading.

Delete Pictures with Duplicates Feature

The easiest method to delete duplicate photos on iPhone is using the Duplicate feature that’s built into Apple’s Photos app, which is super quick and easy. It can identify similar copies of pictures and videos in your album and enable you to automatically merge and delete them to save space. Here’s the detailed instructions to remove duplicate images:

Step 1: Navigate the Photos app on your iPhone.

Step 2: Tap Albums at the bottom of the screen.

Step 3: Scroll down to the Utilities section and tap the Duplicates button. Then you’ll see the number of duplicates you have on the screen and the most recent is at the bottom.

Step 4: Tap Merge in the upper-right corner of any set of duplicates. Note that you can tap a photo in the group to see a larger view first.

Step 5: Confirm that you want to merge the pictures by clicking the Merge X Exact Copies.

merge the duplicates

If you want to delete all duplicate groups, follow the steps below to make it:

Step 1: Tap Select in the upper-right corner.

Step 2: Tap Select All to mark them.

Step 3: Tap Merge (X) at the bottom.

Step 4: Confirm whether you want to Merge X Exact Copies Only or Merge X Items in the pop-up screen.

Note:
The duplicates that are deleted from the merge process are saved in the Recently Deleted album in the Photos app.

If you want to permanently erase duplicates from your device, follow the steps:

Step 1: Go to Photos app > Albums > Recently Deleted.

Step 2: Tap Select in the upper-right corner, then select the pictures you want to delete.

Step 3: Tap Delete.

Step 4: Tap Delete From This iPhone to confirm.

By this process, you can permanently erase duplicates from your device.

Erase Duplicate Photos Manually with the Search Tool

You can erase duplicate photos manually by using the Search tool in Photos. You can search for specific people, places, or even specific settings. If you have any duplicates, you’ll be able to spot them when scrolling through the results quickly. Just follow the steps to make it:

Step 1: In Photos, tap Search in the bottom-right corner.

Step 2: Type in the specific thing you want to check, like flowers, or animals, in the search bar.

Step 3: You can tap See All to go through the results.

Step 4: In the top right, tap Select.

search for the duplicates

Step 5: Select all of the duplicates and delete them.

If your iPhone can’t delete photos, you can navigate this post to find solutions: Methods to Fix the “Can’t Delete Photos from iPhone” Issue.

Wrap Things up

When you want to delete duplicate photos on iPhone, you can try the above techniques to make it, and then you can clean up your photos to clear space for more memories in just minutes. Have you tried these methods? Hope this article can help you figure out this problem.

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