My iPhone Photos app slowly crept past the point of being fun to scroll. Trips, pet videos, burst shots and a mountain of screenshots kept chewing through storage until the “iPhone storage almost full” alert became routine. I wanted a win I could see right away without paying for another app or more iCloud space. It was like playing the free storage lottery.
The Photos app ended up being the fix I was searching for. On iOS 16 or newer, a Duplicates album gathers identical shots so you can merge or delete them in batches. I opened it out of curiosity and cleared dozens of lookalikes from the same vacation album. The storage bar moved. Backups felt faster. Browsing the camera roll stopped lagging.
If your iPhone is packed with copies of the same photo, start there. Open Photos, tap Albums, find Duplicates under Utilities, then merge or delete. Removing duplicate photos frees up space quickly and turns cleanup into a simple, focused task that also surfaces memories you forgot you saved.
For more, check out every new feature we’re expecting Apple to drop with iOS 26 this fall.
Remove duplicate photos and videos to get more storage on your iPhone.
Screenshots by Jeff Carlson/CNET
Apple introduced its “duplicate detection” feature in 2022 and it works just as its name suggests. The tool uses on-device AI to identify identical images and aggregate them in an easy-to-find album in the Photos app. Apple says the iPhone classifies duplicates not only as exact copies but also as photos that appear to be the same but have unique resolutions, file formats or other slight differences. That includes lower-resolution versions you may have saved to share on social media or even bursts of near-identical shots taken at the same time.
Here’s how to use the iPhone’s built-in tool to free up storage space:
1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down to the Utilities section and tap Duplicates. This is where you can view all the duplicate photos on your iPhone and delete them, either individually or at once.
3. If you want to delete all the duplicates at once, tap the Select button, and then tap Select All. You can also remove them in groups of two or more: Tap Select in the top right corner and then tap the Select button to the right of the pairs. Next, tap Merge [number] to merge all the duplicate photos your iPhone detects and send them to the trash.
4. If you want to delete duplicates individually, tap the Merge button that appears next to each pair. Then tap Merge [number] Copies to delete duplicates. Go down the line and repeat this step for all the identical photos you want to delete.
Merging keeps the best version of the photo in your library. The duplicates are moved to the Recently Deleted album.
If you found this iOS feature helpful, check out CNET’s cheat sheet for iOS 18. For more advice on how to save space, read our full list of tips for clearing your iPhone’s storage.
