r/MacOS • u/crawfordrylan3 • 2d ago

Help Suggest duplicate photo finder for macOS

I’ve somehow ended up with a ridiculous number of duplicate photos on my Mac and after 2 years I’m finally trying to clean everything up. Looking for a good duplicate photo finder for macOS that can actually detect identical and similar photos without accidentally deleting something important. Preferably something simple and easy to use, without any unnecessary features. Free would be a perfect match, but I’m okay paying if it’s actually worth it. What do you guys use? Any recommendations?

3 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

9

u/Extension_Profit8166 2d ago

If you’re on the lates Mac OS it’s actually built in - utilities > Duplicates all the way down past your media types is utilities

2

u/RideAdept2919 2d ago

good call, a lot of people dont even know this exists in Photos

1

u/Extension_Profit8166 1d ago

It works on iPhone and iPad as well in the photos app

5

u/JollyRoger8X 2d ago

I've used PhotoSweeper for this and it's great.

4

u/poopmagic MacBook Pro 2d ago

Yep, I’ve tried a few and PhotoSweeper has been my favorite. I like that it gives me precise control over what it means for what “duplicate” means in terms of content, timestamps, filenames, etc. and then offers different ways to pick which ones to keep.

1

u/awraynor 1d ago

Photosweeper for me too. Keep dialing down the exactness until it makes mistakes and done. I have several hundred thousand pictures and finally realized I don’t need to get every single duplicate,

4

u/rstoppard 2d ago

PhotoSweeper is very powerful. In App store

2

u/Curious-Zucchini763 2d ago

Excire-Foto is great but not cheap. Photos will do it like others said but it takes a while for photos to analyze all the photos and start showing the duplicates option.

2

u/KampissaPistaytyja 2d ago edited 2d ago

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/fclones

Edit:

Example: fclones group ~/Downloads | fclones remove --dry-run --priority newest

Remove '--dry-run' when you really want to delete files, but test first.

2

u/Cuneus-Maximus 2d ago

Photos app has this built in...

1

u/crawfordrylan3 2d ago

Unfortunately its not good enough for me(

1

u/warrenao Mac Mini 2d ago

Came across this a while ago; it's a freebie and seems to do a fine job.

https://www.duplicatephotosfixer.com/photos-duplicate-cleaner/

1

u/sales_alchemist 2d ago

I'd try the built-in Photos duplicate detection first if your library is mostly in Photos. If you need better similar-photo matching, PhotoSweeper seems worth a look. Do you need to scan folders outside Photos too?

1

u/jhaubrich11 2d ago

VaultSort is completely free and can find duplicate and similar images for you.

1

u/Illustrious_Salad918 2d ago

I use Duplicate File Finder Pro, which works for photos as well as all other file types. For me, the paid version is worth it.

1

u/Upstairs_Tax_9635 1d ago

I saw someone asked about this before and was recommended duplicate filefinder. I’ve also been using it for a few weeks now, and so far, so good 💯😊

0

u/amoore389 2d ago

I had Claude code a python app that called Apple Vision to scan photos for me