Remove Duplicate Pictures: Merge Duplicate Photos on iPhone

On the iPhone and in your iCloud, serial photo recordings, copying images, downloading image files multiple times and editing images in Apps keep piling up duplicates. These can be viewed and merged in the Photos app in the "Duplicates" folder.

How this works and what happens in detail, you can read in this guide. At the end there is also an explanatory video on removing duplicate images on the iPhone.

Merge photo duplicates on the iPhone: Here's how!

Duplicate photos, copied sketches, screenshots created more than once, images downloaded more than once and more can either be found manually in the "Recent" overview of the Photos app with all saved images and videos. Or you use it iOS 16 specially built-in folder in the Photos app, which automatically does this for you. To access this, do the following:

1. Open the Photos app on your Apple iPhone
2. In the Albums tab, scroll down to the Other section
3. Tap on the folder called "Duplicates"

If you have duplicate images or photos that look very similar on your device, they will appear there. The duplicates are divided into exact copies and apparently identical photos with only small deviations. The file size of the individual images is also displayed. Other differences can lie in the file format, in the metadata, etc.

To merge the files, either tap directly on "Merge" to the right of the images or tap on "Select" or "Select All" and then merge the selected images.

Remove Duplicate Pictures on iPhone: Which Version Remains?

The Photos app from iOS 16 should get the best of all worlds when removing duplicates or merging individual files. This means that the highest resolution version of the image is kept. However, if the other versions contain more metadata or tags or other relevant data, these are copied into the high-resolution file. A high-resolution image with all search criteria and data is retained. If you don't like the merge result, you can find the removed duplicates in the Recently Deleted folder. There you can restore them.

Johannes Domke

After graduating from high school, Johannes completed an apprenticeship as a business assistant specializing in foreign languages. But then he decided to research and write, which resulted in his independence. For several years he has been working for Sir Apfelot, among others. His articles include product introductions, news, manuals, video games, consoles, and more. He follows Apple keynotes live via stream.