Duplicates Folder Not Appearing in Photos Sidebar?

There is no bug preventing duplicates from appearing. You have to allow the Photos app time to scan your entire photo library to detect duplicates. There is no indication of the scan process. My own Photo library found about 200 duplicates after a day or two (I wasn't paying attention or looking for it). And no, it was not just duplicate file names. That is not how it works. It found duplicate images that were different sizes and resolutions. I just did my wife's Photo library of about 75,000 images and launched that Photo Library in Photos last night in macOS Ventura. This afternoon I checked the Photos app and the Duplicates album was in the sidebar and it had found over 35,000 duplicate images. Some in triple and quadruple duplicates. This likely caused by errors when importing new photos did not detect duplicate images and imported the same images multiple times.

As others mentioned, you can select all images with Command-A, and then merge all the duplicates into one single image that retains the highest resolution and quality, while deleting the rest by moving them to the deleted items folder so you can manually delete them all.

If you don't get the duplicate album, then your Photo library likely does not have any duplicates. Allow the Photos app time to scan your library. The larger the library, the longer it will take.

Had the same problem. Solution is in the tip:

"Photos will finish scanning for duplicates when you’re not using the app and your Mac is connected to power."

Also:

"Duplicates are classified both as exact copies that may have different metadata, as well as photos that appear to be the same, but may have unique resolutions, file formats or other slight differences".

So:

As soon as I discovered the Duplicates folder with the doubles on my mac, I immediately started downloading the 55,000+ pics and 7,000+ videos from iCloud. I'll check them out and even possibly change my storage plan to save money. (Might as well keep them all on my mac, since sorting them under the folders People or Places isn't possible in the iCloud.)

It however still looks like a daunting task, since the duplicates can't all be merged or erased at once. (At least, I haven't found that option yet.) That means every single duplicate must be checked and decided upon.

ATHiker95 wrote:

Interestingly, If I click on "Both Libraries" (I have a shared library set up with my wife), I see Duplicates. If I switch to Personal Library, it disappears. If I click on Shared Library, it also disappears.

Mark

The Duplicates are only shown, if Both Libraries is selected.

So just leave the app open on you're iMac and it will find the duplicates

I repaired the photo library and for th first time the duplicates appeared in the sidebar, photos now scanning for duplicates, still no success with iPhone 16.3

Hello - I upgraded to Ventura 13.0 yesterday and all appeared to go well. I opened up Photos and I saw the duplicate selection. The program showed me several duplicates that were in my file and I thought I would try to merge a few of the files just to get the feel of the program flow. Shortly thereafter, I closed the application and moved on to explore other features of the upgrade. When I returned to Photos, the "duplicates" selection was gone. I looked at settings and other menus to see if there had been something turned off or that needed adjusting. I also shut down then reopened the app several times with no change. I restarted the computer several times without change. Any suggestions? Is there a setting I am missing? Thank you

I also just upgraded to Ventura and "Duplicates" is not appearing as an option in Photos. I have A LOT of duplicates and was very excited to utilize this new feature. Looking forward to the feedback. Thank you all!

I have the same problem. I installed Ventura and when I went to Photos, having read about the new feature, there was a Duplicates folder with over 2,700 images in. I deleted them in batches which seemed fine.

However there are still dozens/hundreds of duplicates among more recent photos but the Duplicates folder is gone and nothing seems to bring it back.

Things I have tried:

• restarting laptop/restarting app
• rebuilding Photolibrary
• manually End Process for photoanalysisid then letting it restart itself
• leaving my laptop on all night for the process to run
• manually adding a deliberate duplicate, which Photos gives me the "Would you like to import the following duplicate item?" but even after clicking ok, it still doesn't create a duplicates folder

Interestingly, If I click on "Both Libraries" (I have a shared library set up with my wife), I see Duplicates. If I switch to Personal Library, it disappears. If I click on Shared Library, it also disappears.

Mark

When open the Duplicates album, you will be seeng groups of potential duplicates. Above each group of duplicates is a caption with a date and a control (in blue text) to merge the duplicates. If you select all duplicates or several duplicates at once, ctrl-click the selection and use the merge command in the contextual menu that will pop up, or any of the individual merge commands.

For example: (my screenshot is in German, sorry, I cannot switch the language right now).

It is just to show you, that sometimes the presented duplicates may not really be duplicates. The four images at the bottom are having the same filename, but are very different, and the two image above them, are having different graphics overlays, that I need to keep.

I'm still on Monterey, and not ready to upgrade to Ventura because of the disruption it may cause with an upcoming publishing gig.

Can anyone tell me how to resolve duplicate photos in my Photos library, without going thru them (17,000+) one-by-one, with OS 12?

I have the same situation, didn't see this future, it's really helpful. Hopefully someone from Apple can tell us what's going on.

top left corner. Just click on the up and down arrow next to Both Libraries and then you will see Personal and Shared libraries (if you have a shared library)