Top 7 Best Duplicate Photo Finders for Mac in 2025: Delete Duplicate Photos in Minutes

Over time, duplicate photos can accumulate in the Photos app and folders on your Mac, taking up storage space and leading to disorganization.

While you can manage them manually, the most efficient solution is to use a duplicate photo finder or cleaner, a type of software designed to automatically identify duplicate photos and facilitate their removal.

This article provides a comparison of seven duplicate photo finders for Mac along with detailed reviews of each app to help you choose the one that best suits your needs.

 

A brief comparison

A set of duplicate photos is two or more photos that are exactly identical, regardless of their file names. Also, there can be similar photos (also known as near-duplicates), such as those that look identical to the naked eye but have different formats or sizes and photos that look alike.

I tested many duplicate photo finder apps available for macOS, and seven of them stood out. Here’s a brief comparison of these apps to help you quickly filter out those that aren’t suitable for your needs, allowing you to focus only on suitable ones.

Note: If you are using macOS 13 or later, you can first check out Mac’s built-in solution, the duplicate detection in the (Apple) Photos app.

 

7 best duplicate photo finders for Mac

Duplicate photo finders typically allow you to scan for duplicates, view them, select unwanted ones for removal, and remove them. The following reviews cover these aspects and discuss features, performance, customization, ease of use, and security.

#1 Cisdem Duplicate Finder

Compatibility: macOS 10.11 El Capitan or later

Latest version: 6.5.0, released in December 2023

My take: Easy and customizable for removing duplicate and similar photos

Cisdem Duplicate Finder helps users manage duplicate images, videos, audio files, documents, and other duplicate files on Mac, external storage devices, and even cloud storage services. It’s easy to use for everyone.

Scanning

Cisdem Duplicate Finder allows you to scan for duplicates in the Photos app and folders. You can exclude folders (e.g. backup folders) and files from a scan based on location, file size range, or file extensions. In my tests, it successfully identified all duplicates, including RAW images, making it particularly useful for photographers.

Its similar image detection feature, which can be turned off, compares both histogram and feature similarities. You can adjust the similarity thresholds for more desirable results.

Viewing

The app neatly displays detected duplicates and similar images. It offers three view modes, allowing you to continently preview photos side by side and see photo information.

Removing

In each set of duplicates, the app automatically selects all but one photo for deletion, but you can make manual adjustments. It also offers preset rules for mass selection, including the helpful Select by Priority rule for manage multiple folders or Photos libraries. Automatic selection doesn’t apply to similar photos for security’s sake, but those rules are still available to assist you.

Deleted duplicates go to the Recently Delete album in the Photos app or the Trash, depending on their original location. There’s a Restore from Trash feature to help you easily recover photos when needed.

Free Download macOS 10.11 or later

 

#2 Gemini 2

Compatibility: macOS 10.10 Yosemite or later

Latest version: 2.9.11, released in October 2023

My take: Delete unwanted duplicates and help prevent them from accumulating

Gemini 2 is a beautifully designed app that helps users manage duplicate photos and other duplicates in two ways.

Scanning

With support for the Photos app and folders, Gemini 2 does a good job of detecting duplicates and provides customization options, such as ignoring user-specified folders during scans. Like Cisdem Duplicate Finder, it can identify similar photos, although you can’t customize how the identification works.

Also, this app offers an optional feature to scan for duplicates in your chosen folders in real time and send immediate notifications for instant removal. This way, duplicates won’t accumulate.

Viewing

Its Summary window shows all found duplicates and lets you them in two modes. Both modes are good for image viewing.

Removing

The automatic selection feature saves you from manually selecting redundant photos for deletion, but you can still select or deselect duplicates by hand. In addition, two selection rules (Oldest and Newest) are available for adjusting automatic selection, which offers flexibility. Deleted items are moved to the Trash, but you can choose to move them to a folder of your choice.

 

#3 PhotoSweeper

Compatibility: macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later

Latest version: 4.9.4, released in September 25, 2024

My take: Sophisticated software for advanced or experienced users

PhotoSweeper offers many customization options, making it a good choice for advanced users. However, newbies and those who are not very tech-savvy may find the app overwhelming or confusing.

Scanning

PhotoSweeper supports working with folders, the Photos app, Capture One, and Adobe Lightroom Classic, making it one of the most powerful options I tested. If you are a photographer, you might want to check it out.

In addition to finding duplicates, it detects similar photos by providing two methods and multiple options. Although I personally find the File Name option unnecessary in most cases, some users might find it useful. It even adds a touch of AI to help improve the accuracy in detecting similar images.

Viewing

This app offers three modes to review scan results. If you are a photographer or tech-savvy, I recommend the All-in-One mode, as the Histogram and Metadata panes can help you decide which photos to delete when dealing with near-duplicates.

Removing

Its Auto Mark feature offers several rules for you to choose from and customize. Most of them are easy to understand, but you may need to know some knowledge about images to understand certain options. You can use only the rules that you are comfortable with.

 

#4 Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro

Compatibility: macOS 10.8 Mountain Lion or later

Latest version: 9.1, released in September 2024

My take: Could be a simple alternative to PhotoSweeper

Like PhotoSweeper, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is designed specifically for handling image files. If you find PhotoSweeper overwhelming but really like some of its features, this app might be a simpler and less powerful alternative that is worth trying.

Scanning

There are two scan modes: one for duplicates and another for similar images. The former requires little configuration. The app itself recommends the latter, which needs some configuration to return desirable results. If you are not sure how to adjust the settings, just start with the Matching Level. Being closer to Low means more results but less accuracy, and being closer to High provides fewer results with greater accuracy.

Viewing

This app offers a single side-by-side view to scan results, which should be enough for many users. The Metadata pane can help you better manage similar photos.

Removing

Its Auto Mark feature is similar to that in the previous app, allowing you to efficiently remove unwanted duplicates in the most desirable way possible.

 

#5 Apple Photos (free)

Compatibility: macOS 13 Ventura or later

My take: Built-in duplicate photo finder that’s good at detecting duplicates but lacks bulk removal

The Photos app (also known as Apple Photos) in macOS 13 or later comes with a free duplicate detection tool. However, using it may require some patience.

Scanning

It can detect photos that are identical or nearly identical and works automatically in the background. You don’t need to enable or turn on it, and you can’t force it to work. You just have to be patient and wait, since the detection may take hours or even days, especially if you have a large Photos library.

Viewing

When the scan finishes, the Photos app displays the detected duplicates in the Duplicates album, which is in the sidebar on the left. (If the Duplicates album doesn’t show up, check out these possible fixes.) You can easily view duplicates side by side and see their information.

Removing

In the album, you need to go through each set of duplicates to merge them or to delete the redundant ones, which can take a while if there are many.

 

#6 Disk Drill (free)

Compatibility: 10.15.7 Catalina or later

Latest version: 5.7.1704, released in December 2024

My take: Easily weed out duplicates in folders for free

Disk Drill is a data recovery app that offers several additional free tools, including Find Duplicates.

Scanning

This free duplicate file finder tool can identify duplicate photos and other duplicate files in folders on Mac. In my tests, it found all the duplicates with excellent speed. However, since this tool doesn’t work with the Photos app, it won’t help if your duplicates are located there.

Viewing

The scan results window displays sets of duplicates. To view specific items in each set, you need to expand it. Double-clicking an item opens a preview window. While the viewing feature is not very convenient, it’s still helpful.

Removing

Despite being free, the tool can automatically select duplicates for elimination, making the removal easy and quick. You can manually adjust the selection if needed.

 

#7 dupeGuru (free)

Compatibility: macOS 10.12 Sierra or later

Latest version: 4.3.1, released in July 2022

My take: A free duplicate photo finder for Mac with good customizability

dupeGuru is a free and open-source app that is relatively easy to use and provides enough customizability.

Scanning

There are two scanning mode to help users handle duplicate photos in folders on Mac. The Picture mode is designed to find identical and similar pictures and allows you to set the similarity threshold. In my tests, this mode was quite slow and missed three sets of duplicates, and similar photo detection was not good.

The Standard mode supports all common file types. In tests, this mode was about three times faster than the Picture mode, and importantly, it found all the duplicates. But it was still slower than the apps discussed above.

Viewing

In the Picture mode, you can preview duplicates side by side and view their basic information. However, the Standard mode doesn’t support image preview.

Removing

dupeGuru provides an option to select all duplicates for deletion with a click, while also allowing manual selection. You can choose to move duplicates to the Trash or a specific folder. There are still other options available for managing found duplicates, but these may not be easy to understand without checking out the documentation.

 

Tips

By now, you may have found the app that suits you best. Here are a few tips that you may find helpful, like tips on how to use such an app and how to avoid duplicate photos.

• If you are new to duplicate photo finder software and have no idea how it works, you can read the app’s user guide (like this one) first. The guide should be available on the app’s official website.
• If your Photos library or photos folder is very large, you can first quickly get yourself familiar with the app by using it to scan a small folder that contains duplicate pictures.
• Avoid looking for and deleting duplicates in system folders like “Library” and “Applications”.
• All the mentioned apps except Apple Photos provide two ways to remove duplicates: moving them to the Trash or deleting them permanently. Moving them to the Trash is recommended, as it allows you to easily restore deleted items when needed. Once you are absolutely sure that you won’t need those deleted duplicates anymore, you can delete them in the Trash to free up storage space.
• To avoid duplicate photos, you can use software to eliminate them regularly. You can be mindful when organizing photos. For example, if you want to move certain photos from one folder to another, use drag and drop instead of copying and pasting them.
• Stick to one way to import photos from your iPhone to the Photos app on your Mac. Either use My Photo Stream (or iCloud Photos) or a USB cable. This helps prevent importing duplicates.