Show duplicates in ITunes 11?

I'll check this out asap (might not be today)... as far as the version that will delete from the source playlist, my completely self-serving suggestion/request is that ratings be the criteria as to which gets deleted... in my case, duplicates in playlists will almost always be such that the keeper will have some rating greater than 0 stars and the undesired versions will have no rating.

Thanks!

Joe

Keep best rating sounds good, probably use most recently played as a second criteria if there is a match on rating.

tt2

Aha! That did it. I only had one track selected. With none selected, it worked! Thanks so much! I've got quite a few to weed through next.....

You may think that this is a stupid question, but how does one go about running the script in iTunes? Sorry, I understand the source, but don't know how to use it! Thank you!

P.s. To all - I saw an article today saying there will be a minor update soon with the "Display Duplicates" function returned!

Follow the link to the download page, right-click and "download" or "save as" to your downloads folder or desktop. Double click to run.

tt2

Turingtest, I did try your script, impressive, however, could you add on a feature where the higher time or size file is kept and the rest marked for deletion? That'll be the ultimate "cleanup" I've got like 5265 dupes, not the easiset to correct manually EVEN AFTER your script! What say you? I'd be game for a reasonably priced paid version too, am sure so would millions like me, tried Jaikoz and so many others, they all suck|

The DeDuper script should do the clean up for differently sized "exact duplicates", preserving the largest file, while merging ratings, play counts, playlist membership, etc. which are lost in a manual clean up. Please take note of the advice to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background on deduping and the script.

tt2

The show duplicates button does still exist!

I came on this forum about an hour ago trying to find if it did exist as i could not find it either. After spending about 30-45 minutes going through deleting all my duplicates ( i only have like 360 songs luckily) by having it sorted by name and then comparing the date added with the existing ones i had ( as i added some of the same songs in)

I then proceeded to click on "view" and its the 6th 1 down "show duplicates".

I would also like to add that i hope people appreciate this as i had to make an account to post this and it took my AGES! as i couldn't log in at first.

Message was edited by: Ginga0812

It was (thankfully) added back (in a new location) in the 11.0.1 update that came out last week. It was not in the original 11.0 release.

ahh ok

I finally had the time this weekend to test your DuplicateSong&Artist script. I ran it within playlists that I deliberately introduced some duplicates to and also on my entire 38,943 song library. It spit out identical results to the now reinstated Show Duplicates function for all of the playlists. For the entire library, it found one more duplicate pair (8667 total vs 8665 total) than Show Duplicates did. I determined the differential pair by creating a smart list that compared the two results... the extra pair your script found was indeed a legitimate duplicate that Show Duplicates did not find, so I believe that your search algorithm is working just fine.

My question/comment -- probably a moot one now that iTunes has restored the internal functionality -- would be this: The internal Show Duplicates routine results in what is essentially a filtered view of the source playlist... allowing me to directly select and delete a song from the source playlist. Your script, on the other hand, creates an entirely new playlist apart from the source playlist... which can point me in the right direction to go back to the source playlist and find/delete the duplicates but does not give me a direct means to delete the duplicate song(s) from the source list. Believe me, I'm not being critical... just wondering if I missed something in how it is supposed to be used. The creation of a separate output playlist works fine for deleting duplicates from the entire library, but not so practical for editing playlists.

Also... just a quick note of thanks and appreciation for all of your work... I have made very good use of the replace text scripts to normalize my library's use of correct title case, and also the dead art / dead folder script to weed out empty folders on the hard drive. Thanks for your contributions to this community.

The Duplicates and ExactDuplicates scripts are really aimed at whole library cleaning. Until your particular case I hadn't given much thought to cleaning playlists per se. For the whole library scenario shift-delete from the output playlist with be useful, but not for your task. I will get a script together for this but I'm slightly on the back foot with two aged parents who live in different directions and have both recently become seriously ill. It's not doing anything for my ability to find time to concentrate on programming tasks. 😟

tt2

By all means, take care of the important things first. Thanks again!

joefromnc wrote:

It was (thankfully) added back (in a new location) in the 11.0.1 update that came out last week. It was not in the original 11.0 release.

I rarely use this tool now that my library has been cleaned of duplicates, but I thought I'd check on it just for kicks now that it is back. Unfortunately it seems to have revealed a problem, and I'm not sure if it is this utility or quirks with iCloud ...

I ran the "Show Exact Duplicate Items" version, which you get when you hold the Shift key (this essentially adds album name and track number to the comparison logic). To my surprise it found 86 exact duplicates in my library. Upon closer review, what it is reporting as duplicates are 86 songs in the cloud that are also in my library. I don't use iTunes Match; all purchases are locally on my PC. The odd thing is, not all of my iTunes purchases are showing up as duplicates, and I can't figure out what's "special" about these particular songs. 😕

I don't understand why iTunes would even use the cloud to compare to my local library, but iTunes seems to think I have many duplicates that really don't exist. If I change my settings to "Hide Music in the Cloud" then the duplicates utility still picks up these 86 songs, but only shows the local copy ... so 86 single songs with no apparent duplicate.

Just curious if anyone else sees this, or is there something about my account or purchases that is throwing a wrench into the comparison?

Hey, Thanks for mentioning "Show Exact Duplicate Items". I never knew this existed. Will help clear up some nagging issues with my library.

Cheers.