Having many duplicate photos on your Windows 11 PC can lead to disorganization and take up storage space. However, handling them seems to be time-consuming and challenging. Luckily, it’s actually easy and quick to do. This article provides step-by-step instructions to help you easily find and delete duplicate photos on your Windows 11 PC.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder
Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 
Free Download macOS 10.11 or later
A set of duplicate photos is two or more photos that are exactly identical, regardless of their file names.
In addition, there are similar photos, including photos that look similar and photos that look the same to the naked eye but are different in sizes or formats.
There are four common ways to get rid of duplicate photos in Windows 11. Here’s a brief comparison of them.
| Find duplicate images | Find similar images | Remove duplicates | Ease of use | Safety | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Use a dedicated app | Automatically | Automatically | All at once, or individually | High | High |
| Use Microsoft Photos | Automatically | Manually | Individually | High | High |
| Use File Explorer | Manually | Manually | Individually | Medium | High |
| Use PowerShell | Automatically | No | All at once | Medium | Medium |
Below, you will find instructions and tips for each method.
A dedicated app allows accurate identification of duplicate photos and quick removal of duplicates.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder is such an app. It can find duplicate images, videos, audio files, documents, archives and other duplicate files on Windows computers and external storage devices like external hard drives and SD cards. It can also help you remove duplicates from some cloud storage services.
In addition, it can find similar photos, helping you effortlessly pick the best shots to keep and get rid of redundant ones.
Below are the steps.
1. Install the duplicate photo finder.
Download and install Cisdem Duplicate Finder. Open it.
Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7
2. Add locations to scan for duplicate photos.
To scan for duplicate photos in a location, like a folder (e.g., Pictures) or drive (e.g., Disk D), add it using drag and drop or the Add icon.
To handle the ones exist in and across multiple locations, add these locations.
To find the duplicates in Microsoft Photos, first find out the source folder(s) that have been added to Microsoft Photos, and then add the source folder(s) to scan.
Tip: I generally don’t recommend scanning the entire computer, as it’s best to leave the duplicates (if any) in system folders (like C:\Windows and C:\Program Files) untouched. If you really want to scan the entire PC, please exclude important folders such as system and backup folders.
3. Optionally, customize settings.
Click the Settings icon in the top right corner. In Settings, you can exclude files and folders from scanning by specifying the path, file size range, or extension, and do more.
To enable similar image detection, please select the checkbox next to it.
Click OK to save your settings.
4. Start scanning.
Click Scan to start the scan.
5. View scan results.
When the scan is complete, the results window will appear. The Images tab displays all the found duplicate photos. The Similar Images tab displays similar photos. There are three view modes, allowing you to easily preview photos and see their information.
6. Remove all unwanted duplicates at once.
In each set of duplicate files, the app has automatically selected all but one item for deletion. Manually adjust the selection if needed.
Also, there are preset rules for mass selection. On the left, choose the sets that you want to apply a rule to, and then click the List icon to choose a rule.
Now click Delete in the bottom right corner to delete all selected duplicates at once. Confirm the deletion.
The deleted files go to the Recycle Bin, allowing easy restoring of deleted files when needed.
Included in Windows 11, Microsoft Photos (or simply Photos) is an app to view and organize photos as well as videos.
The Photos app supports photos from various sources: local folders (e.g., Pictures), external devices, OneDrive, and iCloud Photos. You can see the added source(s) in the navigation bar on the left.
This app has duplicate detection. In the past, the detection only relied on comparing file names and sizes, which often led to inaccuracies. Now, accuracy has improved. If two photos are exactly the same in every way (including the file name), the Photos app will successfully find them.
Note: It will miss duplicates with different file names.
While the detection is automatic and quick, the Photos app doesn’t offer an equally easy way to remove duplicates. You need to handle them manually.
Below is how this method works.
1. Optionally, if you haven’t used the Photos app before, you first need to add the folders where you think duplicate photos exist to this app. Typically, the Pictures folder has been added automatically.
2. In the Photos app, click Gallery on the left.
3. Browse through your photos. If you see this icon 
in the thumbnail of a photo, it means that this photo is a duplicate. You can select it for removal. Select other unwanted duplicates.
Tip: In a set of duplicates found by the Photos app, the items are exactly the same. Generally, it’s okay to delete either version.
4. Navigate to the top right corner of this app, click the Trash icon, and confirm the deletion.
The selected duplicates will be removed from the source folder(s) and disappear in the Photos app. You can find them in your Recycle Bin.
You can manually get rid of the duplicates in your photo collection using File Explorer, but the process can take time and efforts. Just imagine the situation where you go through thousands of files to find the dozens of duplicate photos in them.
Here’s the good news. You can use Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) and some tools in File Explorer to help make the process quicker and easier.
This method can work with This PC (not recommended), a drive, or a folder (recommended).
Below are the steps.
1. In File Explorer on your PC, open the folder in which you want to find duplicate pictures.
2. In the search box in the top right corner, enter the AQS syntax “kind:=picture”, which will display all the images in this folder, including those in subfolders.
If you want to ignore small-sized duplicate photos, enter “kind:=picture size:medium” instead. This will display all the medium- or large-sized images in this folder.
3. In the toolbar at the top of the File Explorer window, choose Sort > Name or Sort > More > Size (or Date taken).
4. In the toolbar, choose View > Large icons (or Extra large icons), then choose Show > Details pane.
5. Identify duplicate images by comparing photo content and details.
6. Select the duplicates that you don’t want to keep, then click the Delete icon in the toolbar.
The deleted photos will be moved to the Recycle Bin.
In step 2, if you want, you can use AQS to further narrow your search results, for example, by specifying the date or date range.
In step 3, there are a dozen of sort orders available. You can try several orders and choose the one that works best to make it easier for you to spot duplicate photos.
This method uses PowerShell, which is built-in to Windows 11, to calculate the hash value for each file in the specified folder and then compare these hash values. If two or more photos have the same hash value, they are considered duplicates (except in very rare cases of hash collision). The identification is accurate.
For people who are comfortable with command-line interfaces, this method can be straightforward and easy to use.
However, for those who are not familiar or comfortable with command-line interfaces, this method can be challenging. If you are looking for a user-friendly method, you can just ignore this one.
Also, this method doesn’t provide a direct way to view the found duplicates. If you find this inconvenient, the above methods can be a better choice.
1. Open PowerShell.
2. Specify the folder using the cd command. For example, if you want to find duplicates in the Pictures folder, enter the following command.
cd C:\Users\Administrator\Pictures
If the folder name has spaces, you need to use quotes. Below is an example.
cd C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\"test photos"
3. Press the Enter key.
4. Enter the following snippet and then press the Enter key to calculate the hash values.
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Get-FileHash | Group-Object -Property Hash | Where-Object { $_.Count -gt 1 } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Group | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path
5. PowerShell will list the detected duplicates, set by set. Since it only provides file paths, if you want to check them, you need to copy and paste the path of an individual photo to File Explorer to be able to view it.
6. Enter the following snippet and then press the Enter key to delete all but the first item in each set of duplicate photos. This will eliminate all duplicates at once.
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Get-FileHash | Group-Object -Property Hash | Where-Object { $_.Count -gt 1 } | foreach { $group = $_.Group | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path $group | Select-Object -Skip 1 | Remove-Item -Force }
Important: In step 6, the deletion is permanent. These files won’t go to the Recycle Bin, which means there isn’t an easy way to restore them. For better safety, you can back up your photos before you perform the deletion.
To make digital photo collections well organized and nice to view, it’s a good idea to clean up duplicates on a regular basis. This article discusses four ways to find and delete duplicate photos in Windows 11. The first method is the most efficient and effective. The latter three methods are built-in to Windows and free to use.
With a passion for tech and writing, Sarah joined Cisdem, where she focuses on creating articles about using utility tools to enhance file management and simplify contact management.
