Taking photos is a common habit, whether it’s capturing precious memories or just casual moments. We often take several photos to get the perfect photo and then forget to delete the duplicate photos. As a result, it takes up valuable storage space on your iPhone or iCloud.
Luckily, if you’re using iOS 16 or later, your iPhone has an easy way to work around this issue.
Apple introduced the “Duplicate Detection” feature in 2022, which does exactly what the name suggests. This tool uses on-device AI to identify identical images and aggregate them into easy-to-find albums in the Photos app. Apple says that in addition to classifying duplicates as exact copies, the iPhone also classifies photos that look identical but have unique resolutions, file formats, or other subtle differences.
read more: iOS 18: Your iPhone gets an upgrade this fall with Messages, Photos, and more
Be sure to turn on iCloud sync before following the step-by-step process below.
Here’s how to free up storage space using iPhone’s built-in tools.
1. Open. photograph App on iPhone.
2. Tap album Click the tab at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll down and public works Select and tap a section Duplication. Here you can view all the duplicate photos on your iPhone and delete them individually or all at once.
4. For the latter option, choice It’s in the top right corner.
5. tap choice all Combine all duplicate photos detected by your iPhone and delete them at the same time.
6. If you want to remove duplicates individually, scroll up and tap . merge For selected duplicate images. Then tap merge [number] copy Remove duplicates. Go further down and repeat this step for all the identical photos you want to delete.
Merging saves the best version of your photo to your library. Duplicates are moved to: recently deleted album.
read more:iOS18:
Isn’t it iOS17? no worries. Check out the coolest hidden features of iOS 16
If you find this iOS 16 feature useful, check out CNET’s cheat sheet for iOS 17. For detailed advice on how to save space, read our complete list of tips to clear iPhone storage.