Removing duplicate photos from albums in Apple Photos

How do I remove duplicates from my ALBUMS? All the information that has been given is for the file "Duplicates" which lists duplicates in the Library, NOT albums. How do I get a list of duplicates in ALBUMS?



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: duplicates in albums

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Sep 13, 2025 11:57 AM

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2 replies

Sep 13, 2025 01:42 PM in response to nanjogoro

If you remove a duplicate in the library it will be removed from every album, project, smart album in the library. Albums contain only pointers to the original file like music tracks in PlayLists.


If you don't want to wait for Photos to get thru comparing all of the photos in the library looking for duplicates you can take a pro-active role and try the following apps:


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 - $40  

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 - $15 - 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.


Personally I prefer PowerPhotos as it's the premier utility for Photos libraries.





Sep 14, 2025 08:14 AM in response to nanjogoro

Photos won't show the same picture twice in an album. As Old Toad says, albums are just lists of pictures from the Library to show together. So if you see two pictures in an album that look alike, they most both be in the Library.


The cool thing about Photos Duplicate finder is that, when you merge pictures that are in different albums, Photos puts one in Recently Deleted, and it lists the other in all the albums the deleted one was in. So does the trusted 3rd party app PowerPhotos ($40,) and it gives more control of what is called a "duplicate." Here is part of the comparison menu:


On OT's advice, I've tried PhotoSweeper, and it's fine, but as he says, it doesn't do nearly as much. But it costs a lot less!

Removing duplicate photos from albums in Apple Photos

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