I've run into a frustrating situation with Apple Photos. I had a lot of duplicate photos that looked identical, but they never showed up in the Duplicates album even after months of waiting. Apple Support suggested I be patient, but nothing changed. The problem started when I added photos to a Shared Album on my iPhone and later saved these photos back. Unfortunately, saving them caused iOS to re-encode them from HEIC to JPEG, which lost some metadata and messed things up. I noticed that the Shared Album versions have a strange green line when loading that the originals don't have. I've tried using third-party apps like Remo and Slean, but they couldn't find these duplicates, and Apple Photos lacks a way to filter by formats like JPEG and HEIC, which I think could help identify what's original versus what's saved. I've also followed Apple's recommendation to leave my phone plugged in overnight, but that hasn't worked. Is there any trick I might be missing to separate the saved Shared Album photos from my originals or to identify duplicates by format or pixel detail?
3 Answers
Apple Photos indeed lacks a format filter, but you can use the text search feature. If your photos are named with .heic or .jpg, you can create an album with the photos from the Shared Album and search for '.jpg' or '.jpeg'. Then select duplicates and delete them. Hope that helps!
I think Shared Album photos are lower resolution, which might be why the cleanup apps are having a hard time. You could try reaching out to the developer of Slean directly; they might be able to give you some insight on why the duplicates are being missed.
Sick! Thanks!
You're spot on that Shared Album photos aren't considered duplicates anymore since they are technically different. You're in for some cleanup work! Good luck tackling it!
Sigh, thank you!
Brilliant! Will try this now!