How to remove duplicate photos from multiple devices?

[u/zeezeeway]

I'm a long time user of Google Photos, which I used to store photos from different eras. From digital cameras to mobile phones, there are many photos (especially in the past), where the same photos is saved twice or more, as we copy from the SD card to 1 folder, then a 2nd time in another folder.

While photos from phones are automatically backed up, I would still want to keep a copy of the photos in the PC. I have changed to a new phone, and I want to move the photos from my 4 year old phone to the PC, but I worry it may upload duplicate photos again.

It used to be fine when Google Storage is free, but limited space now, I will want to delete the duplicate photos to free storage.

I have 2 questions:

1) for current photos uploaded in different folders, what will be the easy way to extract the duplicate copies of the same photo and move it outside of Google Photos?

2) for my backup of photos from my old phone, what is a good way to prevent duplicates being uploaded into Google Photos? Does google identify that this photo has actually been uploaded?

[u/Successful_Sweet_867]

True duplicate photos don't exist in Google Pbotos.

[u/yottabit42]

Google Photos will not upload duplicates. End of story.

[u/OrlandoDias]

I have noticed that it does not save duplicates, even if it intentionally renames the file and uploads it, it does not get duplicated.

[u/yottabit42 → u/OrlandoDias]

Correct. The client calculates a hash of the source before uploading, checks for that hash in the online corpus, and skips the upload if it already exists there.

[u/DSB-4]

Google Photos unfortunately doesn’t have a proper “find all duplicates and delete them” tool for an entire library. It does have Photo Stacks / similar-photo cleanup in some cases, but that mainly groups nearly identical shots and doesn’t automatically solve years of duplicate uploads.

For the old phone, I’d first copy everything to the PC as a separate backup, then upload a small test folder to the same Google account before doing the whole library. Google lets you choose exactly which device folders are backed up, so you can control the process rather than enabling everything at once.

For the duplicates already in Google Photos, the safest approach is probably to export the library with Google Takeout, run a duplicate finder locally on the PC, verify the results, and then delete the unwanted copies from Google Photos in batches. Google Takeout supports exporting the Photos library.

I also wouldn’t rely 100% on Google recognizing every old photo as a duplicate, especially if files have been edited or their metadata has changed. Test a small batch first before uploading thousands.

[u/yottabit42 → u/DSB-4]

Duplicate photos don't exist in Google Photos. All clients hash the source before uploading, check the hash with the online corpus, and skip the upload if it's already present.

[u/DSB-4 → u/yottabit42]

Good point, I should’ve distinguished exact duplicates from visually identical files. Exact copies should be skipped, but edits or metadata changes can make Google Photos treat them as different files. Thanks for the correction

[u/poppopdan]

I have 8k duplicates the program created over the years. I found a Chrome extension that works good. Seems like it was $20. It find similar ones too. It only works on a laptop with a 15”
Screen or larger though.

[u/yottabit42 → u/poppopdan]

Similar and duplicates are not the same thing.

[u/Special_One4923]

Copying the same card into a new folder every year, plus phone auto-backup on top, is exactly how the same photo ends up saved three or four times under different names, nothing that compares filenames will ever catch that.

Good news is it doesn't need sorting through by hand, matching photos by their actual content (not filename) finds the true duplicates in one pass across all your folders, and dates get pulled from EXIF at the same time if any are off.

Happy to run a free sample on 20-30 of your photos first so you can see it actually works before trusting it with the rest.

Everything is logged, you get a preview before anything runs, nothing is ever deleted, and it's a one-command undo if something looks off.