
In the earlier versions of iOS, depending on your iPhone or iPad to track down the duplicate photos in your Photo Library by default wasn’t an option at all. You had to install another third-party app to perform this job for you if you wanted to get rid of duplicate photos stored in your device storage.
However, that’s old news now with iOS 16. Fortunately, in iOS 16 your Photo Library will automatically find all the duplicate photos in your library if there are any. Finally, the Photos app will arrange all of the duplicates in order for your examination.
In iOS 16, Apple has added a new “Duplicates” album available just below the “Utilities” section of the Photos app. Because of this, detecting duplicate photos in your Photo Library is easy and simple. Just click on the Albums tab and then scroll down to find the “Duplicates” album. (Remember that the album only shows up in case you surely do have the duplicate photos in your Photo Library on your iPhone).
You’ll find duplicate images when you tap on the Duplicates album arranged in sequential order. You’ll also find a Merge button by each set. This button enables you to merge duplicate images into a single photo if you tap on it. Apple’s merging function will notice the highest detail and the most metabeta intelligently creating the best possible image even when you have taken two photos together that are very similar.
For instance, the Photos app will include the best qualities from both the photos into an individual image in case you have one copy of a high-resolution photo and a second copy of a photo that has more metadata.
At the same time, you can merge several duplicate photos or all the duplicates in your Photo Library too by following these steps:
- In the Duplicates album, tap Select at the top of the screen.
- Individually tap the duplicates that you want to merge, or tap Select All at the top-left of the screen.
- Tap Merge at the bottom of the interface. Alternatively, you can delete the duplicates using the trash icon at the bottom right.


Remember that after updating to iOS 16, your iPhone will continuously search for duplicate images, so duplicates may appear over time and may not be available right when the update is installed.