Best Duplicate Photo Finders & Cleaners

Running out of storage space? Maybe it’s time to download a dedicated Duplicate Photo Finder & Remover.

Having multiple copies of the same photo can clog up your hard drive and slow down your PC, Mac, tablet or phone.

With the high cost of Solid State Drives (SSD) and smartphone storage, it’s essential that you find and delete these duplicated files.

We’ve chosen Gemini 2 as the best duplicate photo finder tool in 2023 for most photographers.

While there are some free photo finders or photo cleaner tools available, paid options do a more thorough job at locating and erasing identical copies of the same photograph.

(The best tools even detect images that are similar but not identical – ideal for those who shoot multiple photos in bursts.)

Whatever your usage case, you’re sure to save lots of time and effort by using one of these tools to find your duplicate photos and images.

Best Duplicate Photo Finder & Cleaner in 2023

1. Gemini 2

Developed by MacPaw, Gemini 2 is our best duplicate photo finder and cleaner app – it does what it promises and does it well.

The Mac-only application is a significant upgrade from the previous version. If duplicate photos plague your Mac, Gemini 2 is an optimised and intuitive choice that takes the hassle out of locating all those duplicates that tend to fall between the cracks.

Gemini 2 will also locate duplicate iTunes files and delete them to free up some valuable hard disk space – iOS devices are notorious for transferring and storing much more than is actually necessary.

You don’t have to be stuck dealing with overeager storage transfers on iOS devices. Gemini 2 has a mobile app that is the best duplicate photo finder for iPhone and iPad.

It’s fast and efficient and the interface is well-designed and attractive – typical of MacPaw products. Once you identify the folders or drives to be cleaned, Gemini 2 uses various parameters to identify copies versus original files.

After cleaning up, it provides a diagnostic report that includes any found duplicates and recovered hard disk space. Fortunately, the duplicate cleaner moves selected files to the system trash or a designated folder rather than deleting them altogether – you’re always in complete control of the final deletion process.

Fine-tuning the search parameters before and after a scan is painless and responsive. Gemini 2 is our choice of best duplicate photo finder software that streamlines your photo file management and optimises your hard disk space effortlessly.

This is the best duplicate photo cleaner online, and don’t worry if you’ve got a Windows device—I’ve got plenty of photo cleaning apps for you to pick from!

2. Duplicate File Finder

If you’re looking for a duplicate photo finder that finds all kinds of other duplicated files as well as similar photos, this neat Mac app from Nektony is a great option.

Duplicate File Finder quickly searches your hard drive for similar photos – whether that’s exact duplicates or similar images that you may have shot in succession with burst more.

Once it’s found the duplicate pictures, you can review and remove them with just one click. The Auto Select function is also a handy time-saving feature.

The Cleanup Hints are a nice way to see what the Duplicate File Finder app thinks you should be doing – it can suggest that you delete duplicate photos and the file size savings that you’ll be rewarded with if you follow the advice.

There’s also the opportunity to see similar folders on your hard drive – used in conjunction with the Merge Folders function, you can organize your files when cleaning duplicates.

While other apps in this list can certainly help find similar photos and remove duplicate photos with ease, the user interface of Duplicate File Finder is a step above its competitors.

The well-designed Merge Folders screen layout in particular leaves no doubt as to what’s about to happen after you click the Review & Merge button.

If you think you deleted some duplicate photos by accident, the recovery feature is only a click away in the Removal History pane.

3. Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro

Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is a straight forward duplicate cleaner available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices.

Fixer Pro promises to be a simple way to clean your system and recover wasted space on your desktop. The app also offers the ability to complete a duplicate detection task in a fast and effective way.

One nice benefit is the ability to conduct the duplicate scan of folders and photo apps located on internal and external storage devices connected to your desktop.

Using smart algorithms, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro looks for exact matches based on the file name. The duplicate image finder also locates photos that appear similar based on various attributes.

While you can fine-tune and customise these scanning parameters, the interface is a little clunky, especially when compared to Gemini 2.

Regardless, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro does a good job in completing a scan to provide you with Auto-Marked Duplicates within various groupings.

It’s one of the best duplicate photo cleaner tools available to remove duplicate images from your computer, especially if you’re a Windows user.

4. Duplicate Files Fixer

Duplicate Files Fixer is a paid desktop software app available for both Mac and Windows. It makes our list of best duplicate photo finders & cleaners for its functionality and countless positive reviews.

This duplicates files cleaner has a simple and attractive interface that’s largely easy to use. You simply drag and drop files, folders and libraries for scanning, rather than browsing through libraries.

Duplicate Files Fixer also scans for audio, video, images and text-based files, and gives you the option to alter the scan parameters and select folders to be excluded.

The scanning process is efficient and clearly shown as it progresses. The finished scan report shows how many files have been scanned, the number of duplicates found, and the amount of storage space recovered.

To finish the process, you select the content you wish to delete. If you’re nervous about losing images, you can also set the software to perform a back up of the deleted images… which largely defeats the purpose of a duplicate file finder, in my opinion!

5. PictureEcho

PictureEcho is a Windows-only duplicate photo finder and cleaner that performs well but looks like it’s been designed in the 80s.

Dialogue windows, text boxes and overall layout feel very dated, but it does have a couple of trump cards up its sleeve for photographers.

PictureEcho provides a comprehensive tool for locating, storing and deleting duplicate images. A brilliant addition is a dedicated feature to scan Lightroom catalogues for duplicate files via the image finder. (One of the reasons Lightroom keeps crashing could be due to bloated image libraries.)

Photo scan criteria include file size, resolution, file history and location. Plus, you can opt for a Similar Match feature where images are located based on four similarity thresholds.

Another useful feature for photographers involves searching for images within 30 seconds, 1 minute and 60 minutes of each other. This is ideal for those that shoot bursts of several images and capture dozens of images at a time.

PictureEcho supports .jpg, .png, .jpeg, .ico, .bmp and .tif image formats with plans to add others soon. Furthermore, it retains a scan history so you can review past actions.

6. PhotoSweeper

PhotoSweeper is a fast, accurate and powerful duplicate photo finder and cleaner for Mac.

Typical of OSX apps, it’s gorgeously designed with a clean and straightforward interface and a raft of features that’ll keep any photographer happy.

PhotoSweeper supports all standard image formats, including RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG and WebP. The scan parameters are extensive, allowing you to fine-tune the sort of similarities you want to look for in photos – see also how to change HEIC to JPG on iPhone.

Impressively, even if images have been resized and edited, it still detects them. This is great if you tend to crop photos a lot.

Another reason which makes PhotoSweeper popular with photographers is that it integrates well with iPhoto, Photos, Capture One, Lightroom and Aperture.

In each case, the software finds and removes duplicate photos according to the file management styles existing in these apps.

It’s definitely one of the best duplicate photo finders and photo cleaner available today, but Windows users will have to look elsewhere.

• Photosweeper vs Gemini 2

Photosweeper is ideal for photographers or people with large photo collections, finding and removing duplicate photos. Gemini 2 is a general-purpose duplicate file finder, suitable for all types of files including photos, music, and documents. It has a Smart Select feature, and can scan external drives and network locations, making it useful for multiple devices.

7. Remo Duplicate Photos Remover

Remo Duplicate Photos Remover is a paid app that’s designed to delete duplicate photos. It’s available to download for free on iOS, Windows and Mac – you pay to unlock the full version.

Remo is a simple-looking and easy to use app with a fairly straight forward interface that makes the step by step process rather fun.

As with most of the apps featured in our list, Remo Duplicate Photos Remover provides the handy option to scan folders and libraries on internal and external drives.

Thanks to the De-Dupe Algorithm, it can fine-tune the scan parameters to look for either exact matches or similar-looking images.

Once the scan process is complete, Remo Duplicate Photos Remover moves duplicate images to groups for you to review. Thankfully, it’ll always keep the original file safe regardless of how reckless you are with deleting files.

If you happen to capture photos on a digital camera and then move them to a tablet or smartphone, Remo detects duplicate images across multiple devices and delete those too.

8. Duplicate Photo Cleaner

Duplicate Photo Cleaner is a dedicated photo scanning app that’s available on Mac and Windows. Working on both operating systems means this app is a catch-all duplicate sweeper for Google Photos, images stored on hard drives, and even mobile devices when tethered to a smartphone that support MTP.

The software performs a duplicate files scan of all your JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, RAW, PSD and HEIC/HEIF image files. The list goes on, and it’s quite comprehensive, including all camera brand file types – making it one of the best duplicate photo cleaners for photographers.

Duplicate Photo Cleaner uses a scan algorithm that searches for duplicate file names, sizes and date, and AI to locate similar looking photos.

The user interface looks great and easy to follow – except for the final scan report screen that feels a bit cluttered.

What’s particularly great about this software is that it supports Adobe Lightroom, conducting complete scans of your catalogues to find duplicated photos.

In addition, a Folder Comparison tool compares images in select folders (such as on your back up drives) against the original images in your original drives. This way, you can choose to keep or delete your backups, freeing up more storage space, ultimately saving you money.

9. CCleaner

The CCleaner duplicate photo management software is available for Windows, Mac and Android – no news on an iOS version, unfortunately.

Regardless, CCleaner is one of the best duplicate photo finder tools to find and delete duplicate files of all types.

The software is quite comprehensive, and depending on your needs, there are versions available for home use and business use. We focused on the home version for this review, but the business platform offers CCleaner for networks and even cloud-based applications.

CCleaner is available as a free download for a basic version or a paid subscription for the Pro adaptation. It’s important to note that it’s not actually a dedicated photo duplicate finder since it’s focused on cleaning your whole PC to create more hard drive space.

Because CCleaner was designed to clean drives in general, it’s actually an ideal duplicate photo finder for portable or external drives. CCleaner is one of your best options to fully clean out a hard drive and it can even totally wipe drives to protect your privacy before you sell or trade-in an old drive or PC.

It locates and deletes duplicate photos along with videos, music files and even internet browser caches, much like CleanMyMac.

With customisable controls of the files and applications that need cleaning, it also updates older software to ensure there are no security vulnerabilities and privacy data leaks.

10. VisiPics

VisPics is an effective and dedicated photo duplicate cleaner that’s a free download for Windows operating systems.

While does well as photo finder and remover, the interface is rather ugly and difficult to navigate – something we’ve seen in several of the Windows-only apps in our review.

VisPics uses algorithms to locate duplicate photos with the same details or even with slight variations. It’s handy to be able to locate duplicate images while only keeping the ones with the smallest file size – this is great for those desperate to reclaim disk storage.

If you’re a Windows user and need to reclaim disk space by deleting your duplicate photos, VisPics will do the job.

11. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder

Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder is an excellent example of a simple and no-fuss free duplicate photo finder for Windows.

The app has a good-looking and easy to follow interface with simple instructions and minimal options. It’s an excellent app for those that are not tech-savvy but still want to clean up their photos collections.

Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder looks at all selected JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG and TIFF photographs to find duplicates. It will also find and remove duplicate images that have been resized or even recoloured through editing apps.

You can scan single folders, multiples and librations with no limitations. Plus, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder can locate duplicate photo files on network (NAS) and removable drives, making it a useful software for professional photographers or those with multiple storage devices.

It’s arguably the best duplicate photo finder and cleaner that’s 100% free for Windows users.

12. Duplicate Cleaner Pro

Duplicate Cleaner Pro is an easy to use Windows application designed to clean up your PC to save on storage space.

In addition to locating and deleting duplicate photos, Duplicate Cleaner Pro will scan all file types, including standard music files such as MP3, OGG, WMA, M4A, M4P (iTunes), AAC, FLAC and WAV.

Duplicate Cleaner Pro uses an advanced visual comparison process to locate image files. The scan is comprehensive and will look for images with similar file names and standard editing touches – such as those that have been rotated, flipped and resized.

The application can be fine-tuned to vary the search’s accuracy, and it will search all drives, folders and even take a look through Zip files.

While the free trial version is excellent, it only lasts for 15 days before you need to upgrade to the rather expensive full-priced version.

13. Easy Duplicate Finder

Easy Duplicate Finder is a comprehensive and accurate application to locate duplicates of any nature in every nook and cranny of your computer set-up.

Available for both Windows and Mac, Easy Duplicate Finder uses smart algorithms to search for a range of file types on your Mac, PC, external drives, cloud photo storage service and even Dropbox and Google Drive.

It applies a simple three-step process for you to set parameters, conduct a search and decide what to do with your duplicates.

While not dedicated to locating just duplicate photo files, it will scan all media types, including duplicate photos, videos, games and music. Easy Duplicate Finder even cleans up email files.

Unfortunately, you have to pay extra for the Duplicate Photo Finder feature (on top of Easy Duplicate Finder’s initial subscription.)

The add-on looks for image file types before performing a scan, searching for JPG, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, RAW, and PSD.

14. Ashisoft Duplicate Photo Finder

Ashisoft Duplicate Photo Finder is a powerful piece of paid software for Windows users.

It doesn’t just look for photos with matching file names – rather, it scans for duplicate images with noticeable similarities, such as those that have e been flipped, rotated, resized or edited.

Duplicate Photo Finder targets standard photo formats such as RAW, HEIC/HEIF, JPG, PNG, GIF, and over 60 other formats!

The user interface is clean, crisp and easy to follow – plus the options to perform a duplicate image search are marked.

With Ashisoft Duplicate Photo Finder, you select which folders to scan and, if doing a full system search, which folders to avoid.

There’s an inexpensive annual subscription or a one-off payment that’s also refreshingly affordable – it’s the kind of pricing that makes it one of the best photo removers if you’re on a budget.

15. CloneSpy

CloneSpy is a free Windows application dedicated to freeing up hard drive space on your PC.

The simple to use software doesn’t use any AI algorithms to locate similar or near duplicate photos. Instead, it only locates exact files – for those cases where you have moved files around so often, your PC is full of duplicates.

Once your scan is complete, CloneSpy provides you with a range of options of how you want to handle the files. You can mark them for deletion, move files to a folder and download a duplicate files report for later use.

CloneSpy will check internal and external storage and compare files on CD Roms against those on the system. It’s an excellent tool for novice users that want to clean up their photo gallery.

16. Duplicate Image Remover Free

Duplicate Image Remover Free is a Windows application with a clean and easy to master user interface – making it ideal for novice users.

The software searches for all types of image files in folders and drives. While a simple solution, Duplicate Image Remover Free has two modes.

The first scans for and locates exact duplicates where the file names are the same. The second sees the app search for similar images with variations in size, colour, rotation and even filename differences.

Once the scan is complete, it presents a report to preview the duplicate images before selecting what action you want Duplicate Image Remover Free to take.

The photo cleaner software is fast and mostly accurate but has limited search parameters for you to filter. However, if you need a handy tool to find and remove duplicate photos, it’s a great free option.

How to Find Duplicate Photos in Lightroom

If you’re anything like me, you have tens-of-thousands of photos in your Lightroom catalogue.

While I’m happy to buy high-quality storage devices to safeguard those images, I should probably be a little more conscientious about keeping my Lightroom files clean!

Lightroom tends to develop duplicate files for a few reasons – mostly due to sloppy file management on our part.

If you shoot in RAW plus JPEG, you’ll have two versions of the same image. Or if you’ve placed the same images into different collections you’ll have multiple copies. Finally, if you’ve merged two existing Lightroom catalogues, you’ll find hundreds of duplicates.

Finding duplicate photos in Lightroom is not simple since it doesn’t have a function to find them effectively.

However, there’s a range of Lightroom Plug-Ins available to do the job as a photo finder to remove images effectively.

One such Plug-In is Duplicate Finder – it uses the EXIF data that every image retains to locate potential matches.

The plug-in doesn’t actually delete duplicates. Instead, it places all suspected duplicates into a new Lightroom catalogue titled Found Duplicates. Here’s how to use it:

1. Install Duplicate Finder in Lightroom using the Plug-In Manager
2. Access Duplicate Finder by clicking on Library> Plug-in Extras > Find Duplicates.
3. The Find Duplicates window appears.
4. Make the necessary selection for scanning all of your photographs or a smaller collection.
5. Select the EXIF metadata and filetypes that you wish to scan.
6. Hit OK – the scan will take some time depending on your catalogue’s size and the selections made.
7. Once the scan has finished, Find Duplicates will have placed suspect duplicates in a new catalogue titled Found Duplicates.
8. Now it’s up to you to go through the duplicates and determine what to delete.
9. The plug-in is not 100% accurate – but it does a great job.

How to Remove Duplicate Photos on a Synology DiskStation

Even after taking care of duplicate images, our hard drives are still full of photos we’d like to save. That’s why so many photographers and videographers opt for external storage drives. One of the most serious options for external storage is a Synology NAS bay.

Synology creates storage banks for hard drives and SSDs that you can use to create your own, private, cloud storage. Career photographers with tens of thousands of images often turn to these storage bays when sifting through a stack of USB drives and SD cards just doesn’t cut it.

You have one built-in option to remove duplicate photos in Synology. The “Storage Analyzer” package included in your Synology NAS will flag all duplicate images. However, you’ll have to delete them manually.

Final Words

We hope that you’ve found this guide to the Best Duplicate Photo Finders & Cleaners beneficial.

As you probably agree, photographers tend to keep every image they capture just in case they need to locate it someday! And for those that shoot for a living, you’ll probably have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of images on file – retaining and protecting client work is critical after all.

However, with the use of a duplicate photo finder and cleaning solution, you can keep your catalogue clean. The flow-on effect is a reduction in strain on all your storage devices and hardrives.

So how do you handle duplicate photos? Is there a duplicate photo finder app you’d recommend to others? Join the conversation below and let us know in the comments.