Duplicate photos are photos that are exactly identical (regardless of name). There can also be non-exact duplicates, which look the same but are different in resolutions, formats or metadata. There are similar photos too. Chances are high that duplicate photos have accumulated on your computer over years. Deleting duplicates can help better organize photos and free up space. Free duplicate photo finder apps are available and supposed to help users get rid of duplicate photos for free.
Are free duplicate photo finders really free? Do they do a good job of finding and removing duplicate photos? Please read on.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder
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The good news is that there are a few free full version duplicate image finder and remover apps. All features are free. There is no limit. But are they any good? This list can help you find out.
The good news is that there are a few free full version duplicate image finder and remover apps. All features are free. There is no limit. But are they any good? This list can help you find out.
I tested over two dozens of apps, but I don’t want to talk about all of them because I’d always like to keep this list relatively short. I’ve done some narrowing down. A long list may be boring and inefficient to read. And in the same spirit, I’d like to try my best to keep my review of the apps on this list concise.
Provided by: www.duplicate-finder.com
Compatibility: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000
Latest version: 1.2, released in April 2021
For most users, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder indeed can be an awesome app to help them search for photo duplicates and image duplicates. But this app is inefficient when it comes to removing duplicates if there are tons of them.
By default, it scans for both duplicate photos and similar ones in the folder(s) of your choice. It spent 1 minute and 5 seconds to scan 1499 photos. The speed is fair. It supports 6 image formats such as JPG and PNG, which is enough for most users but not professionals such as photographers.
In the test, it found most duplicate photos. It’s not good at identify similar images, such as similar photos taken from slightly different angles and slightly edited versions of photos. It can find cropped versions of photos though.
In each set of duplicate photos, you need to manually delete the redundant one(s). There isn’t a feature to help facilitate the process. This can be a big drawback if there are a lot of duplicates to get rid of. It will take time and patience. To mass remove duplicate photos, you can try a different app.
Provided by: DigitalVolcano
Compatibility: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 and Vista
Latest version: 4.1.2, released in May 2019
Free to use and allowed for non-commercial use only, Duplicate Cleaner Free is designed to find duplicate photos and some other types of duplicate files.
I recommend the default scan method “Same content”, which quickly identifies duplicate photos by comparing photos’ MD5 hash values. It doesn’t matter if you have no idea what MD5 hash values mean, what you need to know is that this method can find exactly identical photos (regardless of name). There are sets of scan options and filters to configure the scan, which can be useful.
There are three view modes to view the found duplicate photos, and the Thumbnail mode is the handiest. But a still better choice is to use the Image preview feature. In each set of duplicate images, you can select the unwanted one(s) for deletion.
Provided by: 508 Software
Compatibility: 10.15.7 or later
Latest version: 5.0.1043, released in January 2023
Disk Drill is actually a data recovery app. It offers a few extra tools. Thanks to the extra tool called Find Duplicates, it can help you find duplicate photos and some other duplicate files. Some people recommend it as the best free duplicate photo finder for Mac.
This free app won’t let you down if you want to search folders for duplicate photos. But note that the search can be slow with a large folder. It will display the found duplicate pictures for you to view. But the preview feature, which is important to duplicate photo finder software, is somewhat hidden and not handy.
For a Mac user, the Photos app is where duplicate photos usually reside. If you want to find duplicates in the Photos app, Disk Drill can’t help because it doesn’t support this app. You need a more powerful piece of software to reliably remove duplicates from Photos.
Provided by: ManyProg
Compatibility: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP
Latest version: 2.4.1, released in April 2022
Duplicate Image Remover Free is the slightly more customizable and advanced version of Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder. But the preview feature is not as good, so is the overall experience.
This app offers 3 comparison types. To search for duplicate photos, you need to use the “Strong Duplicate” type, which works well but is slow. It spent over 4 minutes to scan 1499 photos. The “Similar Images” type searches for both similar images and duplicates, which doesn’t work well and takes even longer. The “File Properties” type compare images by name only, which is not recommended.
There are a number of options to configure the search. For example, you can exclude folders (such as system folders) and files (such as small files) from the search.
Once the search is complete, you can view and preview the duplicate photos found on your PC. But the preview is too small to view properly.
In each set of duplicate photos, you need to manually select the unwanted duplicate(s) for removal, which can be time-consuming. There is a feature called Select automatically, which is actually not usable.
Provided by: Nektony
Compatibility: macOS 10.11 or later
Latest version: 7.0.8, released in March 2023
Duplicate File Finder is also called Duplicate File Finder Remover. The ability to find exactly identical photos and similar photos makes it a good duplicate photo finder.
There are four modes. Both the Find Duplicate mode and the Duplicate Pictures mode can scan for duplicate images in folders and the Photos app. To efficiently handling the duplicates in the Photos app, it’s recommended to scan only the Photos Library. But the scan is slow. If your photo folder or library has over 5 thousands items, the scan will take a long time.
The results window will display the found duplicate photos, allowing you to preview photos and see photo information like name, size and creation date.
In each set of duplicate photos, the Auto Select feature will select all but one photo for removal. If you want more reliability, you can go through each set and manually select duplicates to eliminate.
Provided by: Guillaume FOUET (aka Ozone)
Compatibility: Windows 11, 10, 7, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000
Latest version: 1.31, released in February 2013
VisiPics can help you find duplicate images and certain similar images on your Windows PC. To set the app to only scan for duplicates, you need to set the Filter slider to Strict. It took 2 minutes and 40 seconds to scan 1454 photos. The speed is slow.
Note that VisiPics always ignores small photos (smaller than 50 x 50 pixels) and large photos (larger than 4000 x 4000 pixels) when it scans. And you can’t change it.
The scan results will be displayed with thumbnails. You can preview them with the built-in preview feature. You can go through the results and select the unwanted duplicates for deletion. Also, there is an Auto Select feature. But don’t rely much on the feature when you are handling both duplicate pictures and similar ones.
This duplicate picture finder free app works well on 32-bit of Windows operating systems. You can also run it on 64-bit versions of Windows, but there might be problems. It works well on my PC running Windows 11 Pro.
Provided by: MTSD
Compatibility: Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista and Windows Server
Latest version: 4.0.42, released in March 2023
If you are tech-savvy, patient and would like to explore a bit, you will be able to figure out how to make the most of AllDup and use it as a great duplicate image finder. Otherwise, this app can be confusing and overwhelming.
It’s feature- and option-rich and highly customizable, allowing users to identify duplicate pictures and similar ones and providing multiple ways to do so. Users are presented with many methods and options, which can be overwhelming. For example, AllDup provides 5 hash algorithms for users to compare files’ hash values. There are also tons options when it comes selecting duplicates for deletion.
The deletion feature is somewhat hidden. I spent a while to figure out how to process the deletion. Thanks to the user manual I found on the app’s official website, I finally found the feature. The feature is called File Manager and located in the Search Result menu.
Provided by: Piriform Software Ltd
Compatibility: Windows 11, Windows 10, 8.1, 7 or later; macOS 10.10 or later
Latest version for Windows: 6.10.10347, released in March 2023
Latest version for Mac: 2.07.166, released in November 2022
Available for both Windows PC and Mac, CCleaner has two editions: Free and Professional. Both editions offer a Duplicate Finder tool. Therefore, The free edition of CCleaner can be used as a free duplicate photo finder.
CCleaner can find duplicate copies of images, videos, audios and most other files. You can set it to identify duplicate photos by content or name or size.
CCleaner excludes subfolders by default when it searches for duplicates in folders. If you want to find as many duplicate photos as possible, you need to click Include > Edit and then select the Include files and subfolders option.
This app lists the found duplicate photos for you to view, displaying photo information such as name, size and location. But there is no built-in preview feature. To view a photo, you need to open it in File Explorer, which is not that convenient.
Provided by: Systweak Software
Compatibility: macOS 10.7 or later
Latest version: 2.8, released in September 2022
Dedicated to handling images, this free duplicate photo finder can scan folders, the Photos app, or a bunch of photos for duplicate photos.
In the test, I used Photos Duplicate Cleaner and Duplicate File Finder to scan the same folder for duplicate photos. Photos Duplicate Cleaner was three times slower. It’s not a good choice if you are after efficiency.
The results window will display the detected duplicate photos. You can preview them side by side and see image metadata.
This app provides an Auto Mark feature to automatically select duplicates for elimination, helping save time when there are tons of duplicates to get rid of.
Provided by: Apple
Compatibility: macOS 13; iOS 16; iPadOS 16
The Photos app in macOS 13, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 can find duplicate photos as long as they are in the Photos library.
This app has a built-in duplicate photo detector, which finds exact duplicates, identical photos in different resolutions or formats, and very similar photos. This detector works automatically in the background. If you are looking for a Mac Photos duplicate finder, it can be a choice.
This Mac Photos duplicate finder displays the detected duplicate photos in an album called Duplicates. A set of photos appear in this album can be a set of exact duplicates or similar photos. Examine them to make sure you know what they really are before you delete or merge them. On an iPhone or iPad, you can find the duplicate photo detector in the Utilities section of the Photos app.
If they are a set of exact duplicate photos, deleting either one will be okay. If they are not exactly the same, decide which one(s) to keep or delete before you take action. You will need to handle the sets of duplicate photos one by one, which can take time.
There aren’t many truly free duplicate photo finders available for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Windows PC, etc. I have tested the ones that I can get my hands on.
As you can see, they may have some features that you expect from duplicate photo finder software, such as automatically identifying duplicates. But they are not good at it.
Some of the free duplicate photo finders may crash, some of them are pretty slow, and some doesn’t allow you to delete duplicates in bulk. You may spend much time trying these apps but end up still having the duplicate photos on your hard drive.
What’s more, for Mac users, most of the free apps can’t deal with the Photos app. To make matters worse, some of them may damage your Photos library.
Professional duplicate photo finder software Cisdem Duplicate Finder may be what you are looking for.
Provided by: Cisdem
Compatibility: Windows 10 and Windows 11; macOS 10.11 or later
Latest version: 2.9.5, released in February 2023
Unlike the tested freeware, it is powerful and versatile.
1. Download this duplicate photo finder’s free trial and install it.
2. Click the plus icon and add the folder(s) from which you want to find duplicate pictures. Or, add folders by dragging and dropping.
3. Click Scan.
4. When the scan is done, the scan results window will appear. The Images tab displays all the found duplicate photos for you to preview and sort. The Similar Images tab displays the found similar photos.
5. This app has automatically and smartly selected all duplicates for you to quickly get rid of. If you want, you can choose a desired selection rule.
6. Click Delete to remove the selected duplicate photos.
With the free trial, you can perform all the steps except deletion for free. If satisfied with the app, you can upgrade to the full version. Its performance won’t let you down. It can help you quickly and safely free up lots of space and is worth investing.
A free duplicate photo finder can help you declutter your photos for free. However, freeware can’t deal with a large number of photos or can’t help you get the task done efficiently, which makes them less useful. To quickly and safely delete duplicate photos on your computer, it’s recommended to use professional software.
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.
Bernhard Suchy
Thank you for your post! The last software works very well on my mac. The scan found over 800 duplicate photos on my computer! And very fast! I don't need to worry about my mac running out of memory anymore. Especially that it has built in preview feature then i can see detail of the duplicates.