Declutter Your iPhone Ahead of iOS 26 and Delete Duplicate Photos Now
This is a common experience: you open the camera of your iPhone to take a quick photo and end up taking several plans that all seem identical. But another common experience is to forget to delete duplicates later, which end up consuming a precious storage space on your iPhone or in your iCloud.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to get around this problem integrated into your iPhone if you have iOS 16 or later.
Apple presented its “Duplicate Detection” functionality in 2022 and it operates as its name suggests. The tool uses an AI available to identify the identical images and aggregate them in an album easy to find in the photo application. Apple says that the iPhone classifies duplicates not only as exact copies but also as photos that seem to be the same but have unique resolutions, file formats or other slight differences.
Make sure you activate iCloud synchronization before going through the step by step process below. To find out more, see each new feature that we expect from Apple to fall with iOS 26 this fall.
Delete double photos and videos to get more storage on your iPhone.
Here is how to use the integrated iPhone tool to release the storage space:
1 and 1 Open it Photos Application on your iPhone.
2 Press the Album Tab at the bottom of the screen.
3 and 3 Scroll down Public services section and type Lining. This is where you can display all the double photos on your iPhone and delete them, individually or at the same time.
4 For this last option, press Select In the upper right corner.
5 Faucet Select All To merge all the double photos that your iPhone detects and delete them at the same time.
6. If you want to delete duplicates individually, scroll and press Merge On your selection of chosen double images. Then type Merge [number] Copies To remove duplicates. Go down and repeat this step for all the identical photos you want to delete.
The merger retains the best version of the photo in your library. Duplicates are moved to the Recently Deleted album.
If you have found this iOS functionality useful, see the CNET cheat sheet for iOS 18. For more advice on how to save space, read our full list of tips to erase the storage of your iPhone.
