Why Photos Keep Duplicating on iPhone? How to Stop It?

Why do my photos keep duplicating on my iPhone?

What’s up with all of the duplicated photos on my iPhone 11? How can I remove duplicated photos that keep showing up on my iPhone 11?

- Question from Apple Community

Is your iPhone overwhelmed by duplicate photos? They not only make the Photos app a mess but also take up limited space on iPhone. What can you do if photos keep duplicating on your iPhone? In this guide, you can find detailed answers and solutions to the question - Why do my photos keep duplicating on my iPhone and help you stop it? And also, we will also offer you some ways to find and delete your duplicate images.

Why do my photos keep duplicating on my iPhone?

There are a couple of reasons why iPhone duplicates photos. It’s necessary to find out why photos keep duplicating so that you can stop it.

Reason 1. iCloud sync
Generally speaking, iCloud will sync your photos incrementally. But sometimes, the iCloud doesn’t work well, which may result in duplicating photos.

Besides, if you enable iCloud Photos on iPhone and manually upload photos with iCloud client on computer, your iPhone will get duplicate without detection.

Reason 2. Synced photos from multiple cloud services
Since iCloud storage can be full easily, you may use multiple cloud services to backup your iPhone. Correspondingly, it’s more likely to duplicate photos because photos will be synced from different locations.

Reason 3. An enabled HDR feature
The HDR feature, which stands for High Dynamic Range, helps take multiple similar photos on your iPhone. If you enable the HDR function, you will get two similar-looking photos every time you take photos. Although they are not duplicates, it’s not necessary to save too many similar photos on your iPhone.

Reason 4. Duplicate photos after Photo editing
To share good-looking photos on social media or with friends, you may be used to editing photos with some third-party apps like VSCO. Just like the HDR feature, once you save the edited photos to the Photos app, two similar photos take up storage space on your iPhone twice.

How to Stop Duplicate Photos on iPhone

After learning about "why do my photos keep duplicating on my iPhone", you may wonder how to stop your iPhone from duplicating photos. The following tips may give you some inspiration.

Tip 1. Keep uploading photos to iCloud from one source
If you backup iPhone pictures to iCloud, you’d better choose to either manually sync it on computer or automatically upload it by turning on iCloud Photos on iPhone.

Tip 2. Use one cloud service on your iPhone
To avoid duplicating photos on iPhone from multiple cloud services, you may need to choose one automatic cloud service on iPhone. If you are looking for other backup solutions, you can backup iPhone manually with other cloud services on iPhone or backup iPhone to PC.

Tip 3. Turn off the Auto HDR feature on your iPhone
It’s a nice try to turn off the Auto HDR feature to stop your iPhone from saving similar photos. You can turn off the Auto HDR feature by going to Settings > Camera > Toggle off Auto HDR. Now, you’re free to choose when to use HDR feature to take photos by turning on or off HDR in the Camera app.

Optionally, you can also choose to turn off the Keep Normal Photo altogether to keep a single copy. You can go to Settings > Camera > Toggle off the option Keep Normal Photo. 

Tip 4. Delete original photos in time after editing them
After editing photos, it is suggested to delete original photos in time to avoid your iPhone saving too many similar photos. If you want to keep both original and edited photos without taking up much iPhone space, you can transfer photos from iPhone to computer first.

How to remove duplicate photos on iPhone with 2 Methods

You can try the four tips above to stop iPhone from duplicating photos, but how can you remove the existing duplicate photos on iPhone? In this part, you can get two ways to make it.

Method 1. Easily find and remove duplicate photos on iPhone by FoneTool

To automatically filter and remove duplicate photos on iPhone, it is suggested to try FoneTool. The function Photos Deduplication can make things simpler. Within just a few clicks, you can easily find all duplicate photos on your iPhone. And you can delete them or migrate them to your computer.

What the Photos Deduplication function can do for you:
✓ Scan all duplicate photos on your iPhone. FoneTool can scan all duplicates on your iPhone no matter they are stored in the Camera Roll or any other folders.
✓ Similar photos are involved. FoneTool automatically filters both similar and duplicate photos on iPhone. You’re free to choose to delete part or all of them.

FoneTool is widely compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod. It works well with Win 11/10/8/7. Now, follow the steps below to quickly remove duplicate photos on iPhone by FoneTool.

Step 1. Click the icon below to download FoneTool to your computer > Connect your iPhone to computer with USB.

Step 2. Launch FoneTool > From Toolbox, click Photo Deduplication.

Step 3.  Choose Scan iOS Device when the Photos Duplication program is launched.

Step 4. Click Start Scanning to start > All duplicate and similar photos are listed in the left pane > Click Delete or Migrate to delete these duplicates.

To better manage iPhone photos, you can rely on many other functions in FoneTool. For example, if you take photos in HEIC format on iPhone, the HEIC Converter function in FoneTool can help you convert HEIC to JPG/JPEG/PNG so that they can be browsed or edited on other platforms.

Method 2. Manually find and delete duplicate photos on iPhone

Obviously, you can manually delete duplicate photos in the Photos app on iPhone. It requires some time and patience to complete.

Just go to the Photos app > Browse and select the photos you’d like to delete one after another > Click the Trashcan icon to delete.

The deleted photos will be moved to the folder Recently Deleted. To completely delete them, go to Photos > Scroll down and click Recently Deleted > Click Select > Delete All.

Conclusion

That’s all for why photos keep duplicating on iPhone. Hope you can have a clearer idea about the question - Why do my photos keep duplicating on my iPhone?

If your photos on iPhone are in a mess, you can rely on FoneTool to better organize photo library without effort.