Photos: removing duplicates and without altering albums

I know that photos in albums are just links and not physical copies of a photo.


for whatever reason, my Photos Library has many duplicates (as identified by tools such as Gemini or photos Duplicate Cleaner”). I would like to remove duplicates to salvage disk space. However if these photos are in an album, how do I know which copy of the photo (the original or the duplicate) is in the album, and should be retained? Or, another way to phrase my question: how do I know which copy of the photo (the original or the duplicate) to remove without impacting content of photo albums?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 7, 2020 12:58 PM

Reply
1 reply

Jan 9, 2020 4:25 PM in response to vilou

Good afternoon vilou,


Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!


I understand you are trying wanting to delete duplicates from your Photos Library. The best way to do this is manually within the Photos app. If you are looking at a photo in an album, you can right-click on it and choose "Show in All Photos" to see if there are duplicates. If you remove a photo from an album, the duplicates will remain in any other albums. If you delete a photo from All Photos, then the photo will be deleted from all albums it might be linked to. Make sure you have a Time Machine backup of your computer, and a second backup of your Photos library on separate external drives before making big changes like this. You can create a third backup of your most precious photos and videos outside of the library to a folder on your Mac or external drive.


Back up the library in Photos on Mac - Photos User Guide


Export photos, videos, and slideshows from Photos on Mac - Photos User Guide


Delete photos or recover deleted ones in Photos on Mac - Photos User Guide


Using third-party apps to remove duplicate photos might damage your Photos for macOS library.


Take care.



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Photos: removing duplicates and without altering albums

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