How to find and delete duplicate photos in Google Photos

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Without a doubt, Google Photos is an app that has come a long way in terms of efficiency and usefulness for all users, especially on Android. The only problem is that it still lacks essential functions, such as automatically finding duplicate photos, so we will have to do it manually, here we explain how to find duplicate photos in Google Photos and how to delete them .

Why are my photos often duplicated in Google Photos?

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In defense of Google Photos, this app has always tried to prevent this problem from occurring with duplicate photos. Google’s method of doing this has been to avoid uploading two or more images that contain the same metadata . That is to say, two identical photos in the sense of the information that they have in their code.

However, it is possible for two identical images to have different metadata depending on where they were obtained. In terms of the gallery, you can see two identical photos and Google Photos will consider them as different documents and therefore allow them to be uploaded without problems.

That is, in the end you can end up with several duplicate photos if, for example, you took them from two different sources, and Google Photos does not have any tool that allows you to put them all together and delete them . So to delete them you will have to locate them one by one, which is a very tedious task.

How to remove all duplicate images from Google Photos

So hey, what’s the best you can do? In our opinion, we believe that you should prevent this from happening any longer, and while there is no 100 percent effective way to prevent duplicates, there are some good techniques. For example, we recommend that you disable device backup folders .

Instagram, for example, will save all the photos you upload to its platform, even if these photos are already in your gallery in the camera photos folder. That is, you will have the same photograph twice and that is exactly what we want to avoid . To disable these device backup folders, follow the steps below:

  • Enter Google Photos on your mobile.
  • Enter your profile by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner and enter Photo Settings .
  • Click on the Backup and sync option.
  • Go to the bottom and choose where it says Backup device folders .
  • Here you only have to disable all the folders that you do not want to make backups to avoid storing duplicate photos.

Now as far as finding the duplicate photos and deleting them is concerned, there isn’t much you can do other than go through the process manually . Our recommendation is that you do it directly from the Google Photos online site on your PC. In this way, you will have a better view of all the images and it will be easier.

Of course, there are applications that offer you services to locate your duplicate photos in Google Photos and delete them, but as part of our recommendations, we suggest that you do not use them . It is not very safe to give third-party apps access to your photos and Google information, however, you could try organizing them directly on your mobile with the help of a good gallery app.

That has been all for now, the truth is that when it comes to finding duplicate photos and deleting them you don’t have many other options with Google Photos. But even so, Google Photos is still a very good application to store your images in the cloud and it has many other options such as, for example, changing the dates of your photos to be able to organize them chronologically.