May 10, 2022
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If you shoot a lot with your camera or smartphone and store the photos on your computer, chances are high that lots of 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 duplicates? Please read on.
Cisdem Duplicate Finder
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Many apps claim to detect and eliminate duplicate photos on computer with no cost to users. As a matter of fact, they don’t. Users have to pay to perform the deletion, or they are only allowed to delete a limited number of the found duplicates for free. A totally free one should let users find and delete without limit.
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? Let’s find out.
Provided by: 508 Software
Compatibility: macOS 10.6 or later
Latest version: 4.6.380, released in March 2022
Disk Drill is a data recovery app with a few extra tools. One of the extra tools is called Find Duplicates, which can find duplicate photos, videos, documents, etc. It’s recommended by some people as the best free duplicate photo finder for Mac.
This free app can scan folders for duplicate photos but can be slow when scanning a large folder. It will display the found duplicate pictures for you to view. But the preview feature, which is important, is somewhat hidden and inconvenient.
Please note that Disk Drill doesn’t support the Photos app. Photos is where most Mac users store their photos and where duplicate photos usually reside on a Mac. You need a more powerful piece of software to reliably remove duplicates from Photos.
Provided by: duplicate-finder.com
Compatibility: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000
Latest version: 1.2, released in April 2021
It’s indeed an awesome app to search for photo duplicates and image duplicates. The process is easy. The performance is not bad. It can even identify the slightly edited versions of the same photo, helping you easily locate the best version to keep.
The preview feature is useful, letting you conveniently preview and compare the groups of duplicate photos found on your computer.
However, you need to manually delete the unwanted duplicate(s) in each group one by one. It may take a long time if there are a lot of duplicates, and you have to be patient. Luckily, there is a way to batch delete duplicate photos.
Provided by: ManyProg
Compatibility: Windows 10, 8, 7, XP
Latest version: 2.4.1, released in April 2022
If you are looking for a duplicate photo finder that allows enough customizability, you may want to check out Duplicate Image Remover Free. But note that this app doesn’t provide an option to mass remove duplicates.
There are three comparison types: Strong duplicates, Similar images and File properties. Different types use different algorithms. To search for duplicate images by content, choose Strong duplicates.
There are a number of options to customize the search. For example, you can exclude certain folders (such as system folders) and certain files (such as small files) from search.
Once the search is complete, it will list the duplicate photos found on your PC. When you click a photo, its preview will appear. But the preview is too small to properly view.
The app provides a Select automatically button, but this feature is actually not available. You have to manually select duplicates for deletion one by one.
Provided by: Nektony
Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later
Latest version: 6.16.1, released in April 2022
Duplicate File Finder is also called Duplicate File Finder Remover. It’s an app to check for and delete duplicate pictures and other types of duplicate files on Mac computers.
The ability to find exactly identical photos and similar photos makes this app a good duplicate photo finder. It can scan both folders and the Photos app for safe duplicates removal. But the scan is slow. If your photo library has more than 5 thousands items, the scan will take a long time.
When the app finishes scanning, it will display the found duplicate photos in the results window. There, you can preview photos and see information like file size and creation date.
There is an Auto-Select feature. In each group of duplicate photos, one photo will be kept untouched and the rest will be automatically selected for removal. You don’t have to do it by hand.
Provided by: Guillaume FOUET (aka Ozone)
Compatibility: Windows 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.
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 may be problems.
Provided by: Systweak Software
Compatibility: macOS 10.7 or later
Latest version: 2.7, released in March 2022
Dedicated to handling images, this free duplicate photo finder can scan folders and the Photos app 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 has an Auto Mark feature, helping save time when there are tons of duplicates to get rid of.
Provided by: Piriform Software Ltd
Compatibility: Windows 7 or later; macOS 10.10 or later
Latest version: 5.92.9652, released in April 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 groups of duplicate photos for you to view, but there is not preview feature. To preview a photo, you need to open it in File Explorer, which is not convenient.
Provided by: Araxis Ltd
Compatibility: macOS 10.6 or later
Latest version: 2013.433, released in February 2013
Note that the app is discontinued. It may have compatibility issues with newer macOS versions.
Supporting various types of files such as images, archives, music files and documents, it can detect most of the duplicate images and other duplicates in a folder on Mac.
However, this app is not designed to scan the Photos app for duplicates. If you are looking for a good Mac Photos duplicate finder, ignore this app.
A Mac Photos duplicate finder should only check the actual photos in your library in order to identify duplicates and shouldn’t touch any other data in the library. But Araxis Find Duplicate Files will check both the photos and the data. Removing the found duplicates as the app suggests will damage your library.
Provided by: WinZip Computing LLC
Compatibility: macOS 10.7 or later
Latest version: 1.0.0, released on 12 Apr 2016
This freeware app can scan both folders and Photos Library for duplicates. However, it may damage your Photos library, just like Araxis Find Duplicate Files would do.
The app is capable of identifying most of the duplicate photos in a folder on your Mac. The duplicates will be listed in the results window in groups. You have to manually select the unwanted duplicates one by one and then click the Remove Selected button to get rid of them. There is no way to do it automatically.
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, all the free apps can’t deal with the Photos app. To make matters worse, they 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 10.10 or later
Latest version: 2.7.0, released in April 2022
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 display 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 duplicates for you to get rid of. If you want, you can choose a desired selection rule.
6. Click Delete to remove the selected unwanted 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, which makes them less useful. Also, Mac users need to be careful with free apps that may damage Photos library.
Your photos are precious to you. You can’t afford to lose or corrupt them. 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.