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Find duplicate photos

Drop a folder of photos and every picture saved more than once is grouped — even at another size, quality or format — with the best copy of each marked to keep.

I want Find duplicates

Settings appear once you add a photo.

Count as duplicates

“Similar shots” also groups bursts and near-identical frames. Check those before you discard any.

Done on your device No upload, no queue, no sign-up.

Bytes sent anywhere: 0 B

Works offline after you’ve used it once.

How to use it

Your photos go into this browser tab, are compared with each other on your device, and come back grouped with the duplicates marked. 0 bytes uploaded

  1. Add your files

    Drop the photos: a folder, a phone backup, or a pile from different apps.

  2. Check the settings

    Press Find duplicates. Each photo gets a fingerprint of its pattern of light and dark, so copies match even after resizing, recompressing or converting.

  3. Save the result

    See each group with the best copy marked, and save the set with the extra copies left out — to a folder or as a ZIP.

Why it doesn’t upload

A folder big enough to have duplicates is usually a whole life in photos. Finding them shouldn’t mean uploading all of it. Every fingerprint is taken in this tab, on your device, and no photo goes anywhere.

How to check for yourself

Worth knowing

  • Nothing is deleted. A browser can’t delete files on your computer: you get the set to keep, and removing the extras from your folder is up to you.
  • Cropped, rotated, mirrored and heavily edited versions aren’t matched: they really are different pictures to a fingerprint.
  • “Similar shots” can group different photos of the same moment taken a second apart. Look before you discard.
  • Very large batches take a while: every photo is opened once. A few hundred takes about a minute on a laptop.

How duplicates are recognized

Two fingerprints are taken of every photo. The first is a hash of its bytes, which only an exact copy shares. The second is a difference hash: the photo is shrunk to a few dozen grey cells, and each cell is compared with its neighbor — brighter or darker. That pattern of 128 comparisons barely changes when a photo is resized, re-saved at another quality or converted to another format, so two copies of the same picture differ in only a few of them.

Photos whose patterns differ in 10 comparisons or fewer are treated as the same picture; Similar shots too allows 24, which also catches bursts and near-identical frames. Of each group, the copy with the most pixels is kept — the one closest to the original — and then the biggest file.

Questions

How do I find duplicate photos?

Drop them all here and press Find duplicates. Photos saved more than once are grouped, the largest copy of each is marked Keep, and the rest are marked as duplicates. Save the result to get the set without them.

Can it find duplicates that aren’t exact copies?

Yes, that’s the point of it. A photo sent through WhatsApp, re-saved by an editor or converted from HEIC to JPG has different bytes, so a simple file comparison misses it. Here each photo’s fingerprint records its pattern of light and dark, which survives resizing, recompression and format changes, so those copies are still found.

Does it delete my duplicate photos?

No. Browsers can’t delete files from your computer, and nothing here would do so without asking. You get the de-duplicated set to save — to a new folder or as a ZIP — and can delete the old folder once you’re happy with it.

How do I find duplicate photos on an iPhone or Mac?

In Photos, open Utilities → Duplicates (iOS 16 and macOS Ventura or later): it lists exact and near-exact copies in your library and merges them. It only covers the Photos library itself, though. For a folder of files, a backup or photos from another device, drop them here instead.

Why wasn’t a copy I know is there found?

It was probably cropped, rotated or edited enough to change the picture itself; a fingerprint compares what the picture looks like. Try Similar shots too, which allows a bigger difference. Photos that are very dark or almost blank all look alike to a fingerprint, so check groups of those by eye.

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Next steps

Often used before or after Find Duplicate Photos. These run on your device too.