Merge Duplicate Pictures
If you don’t have any more pictures you want to delete but know you have a couple of duplicates, you can let your iPhone merge them into one. As the name implies, this doesn’t just eliminate duplicate photos, but also intelligently combines metadata such as dates, camera data, tags and captions to make sure you don’t lose anything in the process.
This will clear up some storage and reduce the number of photos you have. Here’s how:
- Open the Photos app.
- Select the Albums tab at the bottom of your screen.
- Scroll down and choose Duplicates. Your iPhone will display all of the duplicate photos in your library, whether they’re exact copies or ones that appear to be the same but with different resolutions, file formats, or metadata.
- To merge individual sets of duplicates, select the Merge button to the right of each set.
- Alternatively, you can choose Select in the top right corner of your screen to select individual groups or choose Select All in the top left corner to select everything, and then select Merge at the bottom of your screen to merge all selected items at once.
- Confirm your decision by choosing either Merge (X) Exact Copies Only or Merge (X) Items.
Exact copies will have their metadata merged, while items that appear to be similar will keep the highest-quality version and relevant data. The other photos will be moved to the Recently Deleted folder, where they’ll be kept for 30 days in case you change your mind.