How to Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone Quick & Easy

Duplicate photos take up valuable storage space and make it harder to keep your photos organized. The Photos app has the perfect solution for putting an end to duplicates once and for all! I'll teach you how to automatically find duplicate photos on iPhones and merge them to delete the lower quality image.

How to Remove Duplicate Photos on iPhone

Before you learn how to get rid of duplicate photos on iPhones, you may want to read my warning below. Understanding the algorithm used by the Photos app to delete duplicate photos can save you the headache of attempting to retrieve a version of a photo you wanted to keep. For more Photos and Camera app tips, don’t forget to sign up for the free Tip of the Day newsletter. Here's how to get rid of duplicate photos on iPhones of all models:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Scroll down until you see Utilities and select Duplicates underneath. If you don't see Duplicates as an option, tap the arrow to the right of the Utilities and select Duplicates from the full list of options. If you don't see the Utilities option, scroll to the very bottom and tap on Customize & reorder and make sure Utilities is checked with a blue check mark in a circle so that it appears on your list.
3. Here you will see a list of duplicate photos, the date you took/saved them, and the size of the image.
4. You can go through them individually and tap on the one you wish to delete, then tap the trash icon.
5. You can also tap Select in the top right corner.
6. Here, you can either go through and tap the individual photos which you wish to delete so that you have more control over what you are keeping, or you can tap Select All to automatically merge all duplicates. If you tap Merge and confirm that you wish to merge the duplicates, it will keep the highest-quality image and relevant meta data while moving the rest to Recently Deleted. If you do this, you can still access your Recently Deleted photos and move them back to your Photos app within 30 days of deletion, sometimes longer.
7. You can also go through individually and tap Merge to manually delete the duplicate.

Now you know how to delete duplicate pictures on iPhones automatically or one by one, if you are worried about deleting something you wanted to keep.

WARNING: Before You Delete Duplicate Photos on Your iPhone

Please keep in mind that the Photos app will identify duplicate photos of various qualities. If you just want to keep the photos on your phone and don't plan on printing them or entering photo contests, a lower-quality image might not be a problem for you. In this case, you may want to delete the higher-quality one because it takes up more storage, but otherwise, you'll probably want to keep the higher-quality photo.

It is also possible that one of the photos will be a live photo while the other is not. Finally, it is possible that you edited one by blurring out sensitive information, yet it still shows up next to the unblurred one as a duplicate.

If you automatically select them all and merge them, your iPhone will pick the highest-quality image with the most data. So while it should pick the best quality image, which is generally also the unedited version, because doctoring a photo lowers image quality, we cannot be sure that it will always pick the one you prefer. So keep in mind that this process may cost you some edits if you don't do it manually on a case-by-case basis.

Now you know how to merge two photos on iPhone automatically or manually via the Photos app. Merging is a quick way to delete them and doing this helps you quickly clean up your Photos app and enjoy more storage on your phone. In the past, you needed to use a duplicate photo cleaner app, but the iOS 16 update introduced this handy new feature.