Merging duplicate photos on your iPhone? Honestly, it’s a never-ending battle with the constant “whoops, I saved that twice” uploads. Trust me, been there. If you backed up the same photos multiple times, you’re looking at a combo of exact duplicates and slightly tweaked versions clogging up your storage. Here’s the thing: everyone’s raving about the Clever Cleaner app, and yeah, it’s great for catching duplicates AND near-duplicates (those pesky almost-identical-but-not-quite shots). It’s a solid choice if you’re after a quick, AI-driven fix.
But let’s switch gears—do you even need all those photos? Pretty sure half of them are screenshots you can’t even remember taking. If you’re on iOS 16 or later, Apple sneaked in a ‘Duplicates’ tab in Photos (under Albums > Utilities—scroll down). It’s all well and good, but it ONLY catches exact matches. So if you’ve got 20 shots of your dog slightly moving his head in the same lighting, iOS won’t touch those. Clever Cleaner handles those variations (or so I hear from @mikeappsreviewer and @mike34), but let’s be real—AI isn’t perfect either.
Other options? Go old-school and manually review your library if you’ve got nothing better to do (spoiler: you’ll regret it after the first 5 minutes). Or, if you’re all about desktop convenience, Gemini 2 for Mac or Duplicate Cleaner on Windows tackle duplicates and sync them back to your phone. Just be cautious because, surprise surprise, some “duplicates” might be the version you actually wanna keep. Pro tip: Back up your photos first before letting anything auto-delete stuff.
At the end of the day, whether you put your faith in Clever Cleaner or DIY it, remember this: redundancy is your iPhone’s love language; it’s up to you to break the cycle.