iPhone storage tips: How to instantly erase identical images from iCloud

Many people tend to take photos that condense their core memories or document the mundane moments of their lives in detail.

But most of us take the same shot many times before we capture the “right” image, and then quickly forget to remove the excess. The result is a large number of duplicate images taking up valuable storage space on your iPhone or iCloud.

Fortunately, if you’re using iOS 16 or later, your iPhone has an easy way to work around this issue.

Apple introduced the “Duplicate Detection” feature in 2022, which does exactly what the name suggests. This tool uses on-device AI to identify identical images and aggregate them into easy-to-find albums in the Photos app. Apple says that in addition to classifying duplicate photos as exact copies, iPhone also classifies photos that appear to be the same but have unique resolutions, file formats, or other subtle differences.

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Be sure to turn on iCloud sync before following the step-by-step process below.

Here’s how to free up storage space using iPhone’s built-in tools.

1. open photograph App on iPhone.

2. Tap album Click the tab at the bottom of the screen.

3. Scroll down and public works Select and tap a section Duplication. Here you can view all the duplicate photos on your iPhone and delete them individually or all at once.

4. For the latter option, select It’s in the top right corner.

5. Tap select all Combine all duplicate photos detected by your iPhone and delete them at the same time.

6. If you want to remove duplicates individually, scroll up and tap . merge For selected duplicate images.Then tap merge [number] copy Remove duplicates. Go further down and repeat this step for all the identical photos you want to delete.

Merging saves the best version of your photo to your library. Duplicates are moved to: recently It was deleted album.

read more: Don’t have iOS 17? No worries. Check out the coolest hidden features of iOS 16

If you find this iOS 16 feature useful, check out CNET’s Cheat Sheet for iOS 17. Also, for more advice on how to save space, read our complete list of tips to clear iPhone storage.