The duplicate photos on your computer can be annoying. Unnecessary duplicates waste storage space and make it harder to organize photos. Manually looking for and getting rid of them is not easy. The best way to find and delete duplicate photos in Windows 10 is to use a good duplicate photo finder for Windows 10.
This article talks about Microsoft Photos’ built-in duplicate finder (which is not efficient enough to use though). This article also provides a list of the best apps to identify and remove duplicate pictures in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Microsoft Photos (or simply Photos) is an app developed by Microsoft and included in Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft Photos has a built-in duplicate finder feature.
Note: If the app on your computer is Microsoft Photos Legacy instead of Microsoft Photos, please get Microsoft Photos. The said feature is not available in Photos Legacy.
The feature can only detect duplicate photos in the folders that you’ve added to Microsoft Photos. Once you add a folder, the feature will automatically start looking for duplicates. Note that it only detects exactly identical photos. A detected duplicate displays the Duplicate icon in the top left corner of its thumbnail.
The biggest disadvantage of this duplicate finder is that it doesn’t help with the removal. You need to manually select unwanted duplicates for removal one by one, which can be time-consuming and tedious, especially if there are tons of duplicates. Photo deduplication software can make the task quick and easy.
A duplicate photo finder or duplicate photo remover is a piece of software to automate the process of identifying duplicate photos and facilitate the removal of duplicates. We tested a dozen of well-known duplicate photo finders for Windows and picked the 8 best ones.
Below is a brief comparison of these apps, which is followed by the review of each app.
Find duplicate images | Find other duplicates | Remove duplicates | Ease of use | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Cisdem Duplicate Finder | Great | Yes | Great | Great |
Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro | Good | No | Great | Great |
Duplicate Photo Cleaner | Good | No | Great | Great |
Duplicate Cleaner | Great | No | Great | Fair |
dupeGuru | Good | Yes | Good | Good |
Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder | Good | No | Fair | Good |
Ashisoft Duplicate Photos Finder | Good | No | Good | Fair |
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder | Good | No | Good | Fair |
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7; 64-bit required
Latest version: Latest version: 3.0.1, released in January 2024
Our take: Excel at finding and removing duplicate photos and all other duplicate files
Cisdem Duplicate Finder can find duplicate images, videos, audios, documents, archives and all other types of duplicate files on your PC, external storage devices and even cloud storage. In addition, it finds duplicate folders.
This duplicate photo finder identifies duplicate photos (photos that are exactly identical, regardless of name) based on content. It can find all duplicate photos in one folder (such as the Pictures folder)/drive or in and across multiple locations.
This app displays the found duplicate photos for you to sort, search, preview and examine. It also decides for you which files to delete. In each set of duplicate photos, it automatically selects all but one photo for deletion. In other words, it selects all duplicates for you to remove at once. Or, you can select by hand or choose a desired selection rule (such as Select Newest).
In addition, this app finds similar photos, including photos that look the same but are different in resolutions or formats and similar photos and similar photos (such as burst mode photos, pictures taken from slightly different angles, and slightly edited versions of photos).
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8.1, 8 and 7; both 32- and 64-bit
Latest version: 1.3.1086.659
Our take: A dedicated Windows duplicate picture finder to scan folders for duplicate pictures
If you are a photography lover or photo editing enthusiast and want to get rid of the tons of duplicate images and similar images on your PC’s hard drive, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is worth checking out.
This app provides two comparison methods: Exact Match and Similar Match.
The Exact Match method can scan one or multiple folders for photos that are exactly the same. The scan results window lets you view the found duplicates. You can manually select duplicates to eliminate or let the Auto Mark feature do it for you.
The Similar Match method can find certain near-duplicate images based on your settings.
There are four main settings. The Matching Level slider determines how much similarity Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro finds between images, which is the most important setting. In the test, this app didn’t find as many similar photos as Cisdem Duplicate Finder did. You can use the Bitmap Size slider to adjust the balance between speed and accuracy. Adjusting the Time Interval slider can help you find photos taken in burst mode.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP
Latest version: 7.16.0.40, release in November 2023
Our take: A dedicated duplicate image finder and remover with support for Lightroom Classic
Duplicate Photo Cleaner can be one of the best duplicate photo finders for Windows 10 for photographers, designers and users in general.
There are seven scan modes. The primary one is the Standard mode, which allows you to scan a folder on your computer for identical photos including duplicate raw photos. The Folder Comparison mode can compare folders for duplicate photos. Thanks to the Lightroom Classic mode, it’s possible to easily remove duplicates in Lightroom Classic.
There is an important scan setting called Similarity Threshold. If you set the threshold to less than 100%, this app will also scan for similar photos. A lower threshold will find more similar photos but also more false positives. You need to find a balance. More scan settings are available in Settings.
There are three ways to view duplicate photos, the Table view being the default one. We personally recommend the Tree view. Photo preview and metadata, such as such as camera manufacturer and exposure time, are provided. There are several rules (such as Select duplicates) to help you effortlessly mass select unwanted copies for removal. Or, you can do it manually.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8 and 7
Latest version: 5.21, release in December 2023
Our take: A sophisticated app to find and remove duplicate photo files and other types of duplicate files on Windows
Duplicate Cleaner offers a range of features and options and is highly configurable. If you are tech-savvy, you may find this app very powerful. If you are a bit technologically challenged or are new to duplicate file finder software, this app can be overwhelming.
Duplicate Cleaner has two editions: the Free one and the Pro one. Both editions provide a Regular mode. This mode compares files by content, so it can find duplicate photos with different names. There are multiple comparison algorithms for you to choose from, such as MD5 and SHA-1.
The Pro edition also provides an Image mode. This mode is dedicated to dealing with image files and supports BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PCX, TGA, ICO, HEIC, WEBP, etc. The mode allows you to find photos that are exactly the same, very similar or similar. There are many options to tweak. For example, to find duplicate raw photos, you need to enable the Camera RAW image support option.
This duplicate photo cleaner will display the groups of duplicate images that have been found for you to view. Coming with dozens of options, the Selection Assistant feature can help you quickly select unwanted duplicates for deletion.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8 and 7
Latest version: 4.3.1, release in July 2022
Our take: The best free duplicate photo finder for Windows 10, which is also open source
dupeGuru used to be commercial and went open source later. It’s one of the best free duplicate file finders available for Windows operating systems.
This app provides three modes: Standard, Music and Picture. The Standard mode can find duplicate photo files and other duplicate files.
Specialized in working with pictures, the Picture mode can find identical photos and certain similar photos. For example, it can find the slightly edited (such as recolored, resized, cropped or compressed) versions of the same photo. With this mode, you can adjust the Filter Hardness to set the image similarity level.
In the test, the Picture mode missed two sets of duplicates, whereas the Standard mode found all duplicates.
dupeGuru’s Results lists duplicate photos and similar photos with file information like name, size, path, format and EXIF timestamp. The preview feature, which is essential for duplicate image finder software is not easy to use in the Picture mode and missing in the Standard mode.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000
Latest version: 1.2.1, released in September 2023
Our take: A free duplicate photo finder with reliable performance and a simple interface
Are you in search of a good app to find and delete duplicate photos on Windows 10 for free? Check out Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder.
Despite being freeware, it has all the makings of good basic duplicate picture finder software. In addition to supporting all major image formats, it even supports CR2, a Canon raw format.
This free app is good when it comes to finding photos that are exactly the same. It’s also designed to find photos that are similar. In the test, it found compressed or recolored photos and failed to find other similar photos.
You can easily sort and preview the duplicates that it found. The preview feature is handy. The drawback is that you need to select the undesired duplicates for removal one by one by hand. There is no way to automate the process. It can be tedious and time-consuming.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8.1, 8 and 7
Latest version: 1.7.0.0
Our take: A pretty easy-to-use app to look for and clear duplicate photos on a PC
Thanks to the simple and straightforward user interface, this app is easy to use even for beginners.
There are 2 modes: Look for Same Pictures (default) and Look for Similar Pictures. According to the test, the identification of same photos is good and very fast, and the identification of similar photos is not that reliable (especially if you set the Photo Similarity level to Somewhat Similar or Loosely Match).
After you add a folder, clicking the Start Search button will start the search for same photos. Before the search, you can configure settings by going to More Options if needed. For example, you can exclude certain folders/files from being searched by specifying the file path/size range.
This duplicate photo remover makes it very easy to view duplicate photos by displaying them side by side and by providing photo information. An Auto Mark feature is offered so that you don’t have to select photo copies to weed out one by one.
There are multiple removal options. You can move copies to the Recycle Bin or a folder of your choice. Either way, your photo collection will become duplicate-free.
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista; both 32- and 64-bit
Latest version: 9.1.0.1
Our take: A feature-rich Windows duplicate photo finder that finds identical and similar photos
Note: This list used to include VisiPics, which works the best with the 32-bit version of Windows and can have problems running on Windows 10 and 11. Therefore, we replace it with another app, which can be a good duplicate photo finder for Windows 11, 10 and earlier.
Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder is a feature-rich and highly customizable app to help users find duplicate images and similar images. However, the interface can be confusing, especially to beginners.
It can scan folders and Lightroom for duplicate photos or similar photos, depending on your settings. There are four scan methods. We recommend the first two: Visual Compare and 100% Identical Files (Fast). If you only want to search for exactly identical photos, choose 100% Identical Files (Fast).
With Visual Compare, you will find exactly identical photos, very similar photos (may look the same to the naked eye) and other similar photos. You can adjust the Similarity level, which is 85% by default.
This app has a sophisticated feature to help users select duplicate photos for elimination. For example, in each group of duplicates, you can set the app to select the smaller or newer one(s) to delete, or specify an image format (such as .jpg).
There is a Standard edition (which is enough for most personal users), a Pro edition and a Corporate edition. There is also a Demo edition, which is free to use and feature-limited.
The good news is that the Microsoft Photos app has a feature to identify duplicates. But the feature is not that helpful in removing them. Luckily, there are other choices. We hope that this article can help you find the duplicate photo finder for Windows 10 that suits you the best.
It’s a good idea to get rid of the existing duplicates in your digital photo collection, which enhances organization and frees up storage space. It’s also a good idea to figure out why they are there. There are several possible reasons. If unnecessary duplicate photos are caused by moving or importing photos, you can be more mindful in the future. If certain settings constantly cause duplicate photos, you can take care of the settings.
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.
Antje Conradi
I have thousands of photos on my computer and there’re too many duplicates. Now I got back over 3 GB of space after using the first software you recommended. Thanks so much!!