Hello community, I need to batch delete duplicates (many) fotos and videos on my Mac (macOS Sequoia).
Is there any way to do it all at once? thank you in advance.
MacBook Air 15″, macOS 15.1
lea-law wrote: … I need to batch delete duplicates (many) … =Is there any way to do it all at once? thank you in advance.
Sure. Open the Duplicate view in Utilities, do ⌘-A to select all, and click on Merge. Like picture deletions, the removed pictures will go into Recently Deleted for 30 days in case you want to examine them and change your mind.
Are you sure you want to do that? I wouldn't. Some pictures may not be exact duplicates, but similar enough that Photos brings them to your attention. For instance, here is a duplicate pair of mine:
I like both of them, and one would be lost if I just selected all and blindly hit Merge. If I were you, I would look at each pair closely before deleting them.
lea-law wrote: … I need to batch delete duplicates (many) … =Is there any way to do it all at once? thank you in advance.
Sure. Open the Duplicate view in Utilities, do ⌘-A to select all, and click on Merge. Like picture deletions, the removed pictures will go into Recently Deleted for 30 days in case you want to examine them and change your mind.
Are you sure you want to do that? I wouldn't. Some pictures may not be exact duplicates, but similar enough that Photos brings them to your attention. For instance, here is a duplicate pair of mine:
I like both of them, and one would be lost if I just selected all and blindly hit Merge. If I were you, I would look at each pair closely before deleting them.
If you want to use 3rd party software to remove duplicates you want an app that will identify the potential duplicates, put them in an album or mark them with a keyword for easy retrieval and deletion by you. You don't want one that does the deletion itself for obvious reasons.
I've run tests on the these two apps with the following results and found them to be safe to use:
PowerPhotos - $29.95
PowerPhotos is the iPhoto Library Manager version for Photos and is very powerful. Although more expensive I would recommend it as it has more capabilities than the others like the capability to merge Photos libraries or copy photos, both original and edited versions, along with their metadata between libraries.
PhotoSweeper - $9.99 - Demo version available.
PhotoSweeper compares bitmaps and/or histograms so it can detect duplicate images even if they have different file sizes, file names, image sizes and capture dates.
lea-law wrote: … But, looking at your pics and helpful explanation, I might look into a more sophisticated software to use for my purpose. Thank you again.
Be very, very careful with 3rd Party apps messing around inside of the Photos Library. Certainly, don't try anything without a backup on an external drive. Changing things in the Library without properly using the Photos database may corrupt the Library, pretty much beyond repair.
The trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($30) works well with Photos, and it has a Duplicate finder in addition to to all sorts of useful stuff. I think that it only finds exact duplicates.
PhotoSweeper ($15) seems to be trustworthy, but I haven't used it as much.
Thank you for posting!... I'll go with Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro that I had previously bought on the App Store.
Hello Richard!... Thank you for your great explanation and advice... I have to merge duplicates since I know I've imported some photos / videos to my Library more than once.
But, looking at your pics and helpful explanation, I might look into a more sophisticated software to use for my purpose. Thank you again.
I'm not sure either of those apps has a "delete all" choice.
Thank you Richard... I'll go with Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro and compare results with native Photos Tools on the Mac.
How to batch delete duplicates (many) Photos and Videos in Photos App (macOS Sequoia).
