After merging duplicate photos on my iPhone 15 - BOTH versions are gone. One version in the trash, but other version is gone. I’ve deleted hundreds, please help.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 15, iOS 18
Well, the result of the merge would no longer be a duplicate, so it would disappear from the Duplicates area. Is that what you meant? It should still be in the library and all of the views any of the copies were in previously.
For example, I just went into Duplicates and chose three identical-duplicate pairs from last May 13 that I had not bothered to clean up. After merging each of those pairs, they left Duplicates, but the surviving copy of each was still in the Library view when I scrolled back to May 13.
If I had forgotten to note the date before I did the merge, I could have pulled up the removed copies in Recently Deleted and checked their dates.
If you have already check in the former location(s) of all of the copies, please let us know what measured you have taken to locate them and determine that are all gone.
Well, the result of the merge would no longer be a duplicate, so it would disappear from the Duplicates area. Is that what you meant? It should still be in the library and all of the views any of the copies were in previously.
For example, I just went into Duplicates and chose three identical-duplicate pairs from last May 13 that I had not bothered to clean up. After merging each of those pairs, they left Duplicates, but the surviving copy of each was still in the Library view when I scrolled back to May 13.
If I had forgotten to note the date before I did the merge, I could have pulled up the removed copies in Recently Deleted and checked their dates.
If you have already check in the former location(s) of all of the copies, please let us know what measured you have taken to locate them and determine that are all gone.
"Merge" means that Photos combines some information from the two images, picks the "better" one, and replaces the lesser one with the better one everywhere it was originally located. (If they're identical, then it just doesn't batter which one is "better.")
If the better one was in two albums, and the lesser one was in another album, then the better one will now be in all three albums, and the lesser will be removed from the Library, though it will still be visible in the Recently Deleted view in case you change your mind. Before there were two pictures files appearing in three albums; now there is only one picture file that appears in all three albums.
If a picture from your Library "appears" in one album or in ten different albums, it takes up no more space--that's why duplicate files can be removed from the Library without changing what you see in albums.
The "in case you change your mind" thing may be important if you didn't notice that the two pictures weren't really identical, but Photos thought they were close enough, maybe like this:
So we should be careful when we merge "duplicates."
Thank you for responding so quickly!
Yes, I merged duplicates and they disappeared from the duplicates view immediately. I checked the delayed photos and there’s 1 deleted photo. When I check the Library view, the specific photos are not there. I tried searching by the exact date and just scrolling up to the exact date. There are other photos from the same day but not the specific ones I merged.
im trying to clean out my thousands of photos - and had already deleted hundreds in the trash before I thought to doublecheck the ones I wanted to keep are still in the library, so I may have lost all of those.
Disappearance of merged duplicate photos on iPhone 15
