The duplicate photos on your Windows PC take up space and can make it harder for you to organize photos. They may even ruin your photo viewing experience. Don’t worry. This article will show you how to find and delete duplicate photos on Windows 10 PC in three ways, including two free ways.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder
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Knowing these facts may help you handle duplicate photos in a more effective and safer way. If you want, you can skip this part.
File Explorer (formerly Windows Explorer) is a file manager app included with Microsoft Windows operating systems. It doesn’t have a feature to handle duplicate photos. But there are tricks to make it relatively easy to erase duplicate photos on PC with File Explorer. The process can be time-consuming though.
1. On your Windows desktop or laptop, open File Explorer.
2. To find and get rid of duplicate photos in a folder, for example, the Pictures folder, open the folder.
3. In the search box, enter “kind:” and choose Picture from the dropdown menu that appears. This will display all the photos in the folder, including the ones in subfolders (if any).
4. Go to the View tab and click the Extra large icons or Large icons option. Also click the Details pane option.
5. Click the Sort by dropdown menu and choose Sort by Name or Size.
6. Go through the displayed photos and identify duplicates by comparing photo content and information.
7. Select multiple unwanted duplicate photos, right-click and select Delete.
In step 3, you can specify the image format if needed. For example, entering “kind:=picture type:jpg” will display all the JPG photos.
Some Windows users choose to organize photos using the Microsoft Photos app (also known as Windows Photos or simply Photos). As the successor of Windows Photo Gallery, Microsoft Photos is a picture viewer and manager app included with Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and 11.
To find duplicates in Microsoft Photos, you first need to turn off the Linked duplicates option. The option is enabled by default to hide duplicate pictures if there are any, aiming to provide a good photo browsing experience. Note that the option doesn’t delete duplicates. To turn off this option, go to Settings in Microsoft Photos and set the Linked duplicates toggle to Off.
Now you can start finding and removing duplicate photos.
1. Open Microsoft Photos on your Windows 10 or 11 PC.
2. Choose the Collection tab.
3. Browse through your photos and look for duplicates by comparing photos.
4. Select multiple redundant duplicate photos and click the Delete icon in the upper-right part of the window.
5. In the Delete these files dialog box that appears, click Delete to remove the selected duplicate photos.
Both Method 1 and Method 2 can be time-consuming and tedious especially if you have a large photo collection. The good news is you can automate the task!
Duplicate photo finder and remover software Cisdem Duplicate Finder can automatically scan the locations you specify for duplicate photos. The software detects duplicate photos by content (regardless of filename), so it can also find and remove duplicate photos with different names.
In a few minutes, your photo collection will become duplicate-free, easier to organize and nicer to view. In addition, lots of space will be freed up.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder main features:
1. Download and install Cisdem Duplicate Finder on your Windows computer. Open it.
2. Dragging one or multiple folders into the software. Alternatively, add folders by clicking the plus icon.
3. Click Scan.
4. When the scan is complete, the results window will display all the duplicate photos that have been found.
5. You can sort, preview and examine them as you like.
6. The software already automatically selects all duplicate photos for removal. If you want, you can choose a desired selection rule by clicking the icon 
.
7. Click Delete to delete all the selected duplicate photos in the Windows folder(s).
Below is the video tutorial (a video version of Method 3).
Note 1: In step 3, before you click Scan, you can go to Settings 
and do some customization if needed. You can exclude files and folders (such as system folders) from scan, select a desired Remove Method and more.
Note 2: If you want to automatically find duplicate photos in Microsoft Photos, just add the source folder(s) of your Microsoft Photos to scan in step 2.
Tip: How to find and eliminate similar photos
Your photo collection may also have similar photos. For example, sometimes you take several pictures of the same scene. Sometimes you take pictures using burst mode on your camera or phone. Both will get you similar photos. Most of them can be redundant.
Luckily, Cisdem Duplicate Finder can also help you handle them. This duplicate photo finder software will find similar images and group them together for you to easily pick the best shots and select the undesirable ones for deletion.
You can set the similarity level in Settings if needed.
You can benefit a lot from regularly cleaning duplicate pictures on your computer. It’s possible to delete duplicate photos on Windows 10 for free via File Explorer or the Microsoft Photos app, which is applicable to small photo collections. To easily, quickly and reliably remove duplicates from any photo collection, small or large, you need professional software. Also, it’s recommended to avoid duplicate photos in the first place.
Rosa has worked in Mac software industry for more than eight years. She believes that the purpose of software is to make life better and work more productively. In addition to writing, Rosa is also an avid runner.
