How to remove duplicates from photos?

It can take a long time to find duplicates in 11 000 or 7 000 images. Weeks. So it's best to be patient. The Duplicates album will not even show up until Photos has found some.

Photos will find pictures that that are identical, and it also finds pictures that are "similar." The idea of "similar" is that you may have a high resolution and a low resolution of the same image, and Photos will suggest "merging" the two, saving the high resolution image and putting that in all the albums that either picture had been in.

You want to be careful, though, because some "similar" images may be just sightly different enough that you want to keep both. This pair keeps coming up for me:

and I want to keep both of them, because they are not duplicates!

When the list comes up, you can click and drag over multiple lines of duplicates, and merge them all at once. Before I merge duplicates, I make sure that keywords, captions, and titles match.

From Texas-- let us know how it goes...

Re-reading, I noticed this: "I have the option to delete one of the two images, whereas the other looks like a link to the actual image."

This comment may not help with your problem, but: All the pictures you see are really just links to a file-- pictures can appear in multiple albums, for instance, but they are just multiple links to the same file.

"Duplicates" means two files with the same image, and usually Photos detects those on import (unless you use a trick to sneak around the import process) and it gives you the option of not importing one of the duplicates. Because of this, most Libraries don't have many, if any, duplicates.

Duplicates can happen if there are two different forms of the same picture, and they appear to be intentional. Some times JPG files and RAW files are both produced by a camera, and people want both. New iPhones can produce RAW files, for instance. If you find duplicates, do they have different extensions, like jpeg or raw?

And, double checking-- are you sure they are really duplicates? Can you put two duplicates in the same album? (If it's just two links to the same image, then Photos will not add the extra one to an album.)

What happens if you purposely import a duplicate-- just a picture or two so you can keep track? Does the pair show up as duplicates in the Duplicates folder?

What do you see at iCloud.com?

tanmayj316 wrote: The so-called internal files or interlopers don’t have any option of deleting them.

Images that don't delete came from a different source than Photos-- and they don't even belong to the Photos app, though it's happy to show them.

There are two ways to transfer pictures to an iPhone-- using iCloud or using a cable. Those methods shouldn't both be used together. Connecting with a cable is where the interlopers came from. To get rid of them, you need to connect with a cable again, and trash these pictures from your computer. Just connect the phone to the Mac-- the phone should appear in the Finder sidebar, and you should be able to find those pictures.

When you look at the two images, are they the same resolution? Like 4032 × 3024, or something?

Do they have different extensions, like jpg and raw? RAW files, for instance, would be larger, but are probably bigger than you need -- unless you are into RAW processing, which is usually not profitable unless you are really serious and plan to make large prints.

If the resolutions are the same, I think that we have found that "merge" will save the smaller file. If the resolutions are different, then the one with more pixels will be saved. By saved, I mean that when you merge files, the unsaved one will be sent to Recently Deleted, so you can change your mind.

You can select multiple pairs for merging, you can even "Select All." Or, rather than merge, you can select the ones you want to delete, lots at a time, if you wish.

If you are getting RAW image files, you might want to turn that off in Settings>Photos on your phone.

These two images show different file names, IMG_7555 and 6A88D..., so they are duplicate files, and each one takes up space on your phone. That "6A88D..." thing is a filename that is used internally by Photos, and you are never intended to see it. This is the interloper. Since these files aren't showing up in iCloud or on your Mac, they could be a problem in the syncing of your pictures. You need need to get rid of the image files that have these crazy names.

On my phone it looks like, in the Duplicates view, the smaller one is always on the right side. You might be able to go through the list, select all the ones on the right, and delete them. Try it with some and see how it goes.