How to delete duplicate photos in Google Photos

Updated July 2026 · PhotoDeduper

Short answer: Google Photos has no built-in duplicate finder, so you have three real options in 2026 — delete duplicates by hand, use a Chrome extension that works inside photos.google.com, or export your whole library with Google Takeout and dedupe it locally. Here is how each works and what it costs you.

Why Google Photos fills up with duplicates

Google Photos silently skips byte-identical files at upload. But the duplicates you actually see in your library survive that check, because they aren't byte-identical — the classic cases are a photo re-saved from WhatsApp or an email attachment, an edited copy sitting next to its original, and the same shot backed up from two devices at different compression levels. Each copy counts against your Google One storage.

The full list of what survives Google's upload check — and why Google doesn't just remove them →

Method 1: Delete duplicates manually

1. Open photos.google.com (the website — the phone app is worse for this).
2. Scroll chronologically; duplicates usually sit next to each other because they share a capture date.
3. Hover a photo and click the checkmark to select; keep selecting copies as you go.
4. Press the trash icon. Deleted photos sit in trash for 60 days before permanent removal.

Honest assessment: this works and costs nothing, but on a library of tens of thousands of photos it takes hours, you'll miss re-compressed copies that don't sit side by side, and there is no way to compare quality between copies.

Method 2: Use a Chrome extension (PhotoDeduper)

A browser extension runs inside your own logged-in Google Photos session, so it can still see your library — the same way you do — without any server or API access.

1. Install — add PhotoDeduper from the Chrome Web Store. No account, no sign-up.
2. Scan — open photos.google.com, click the extension icon, start the scan. It runs on your device and is resumable if you close the tab.
3. Review — duplicate groups appear side by side with the best copy pre-selected: highest resolution wins, originals beat edits. A similarity slider controls how strict "duplicate" means, so near-duplicates are caught too.
4. Clean — confirm, and the rejects move to the Google Photos trash. One-click Undo right after, or restore from trash for 60 days.

Limits worth knowing: it needs desktop Chrome (it cleans the same cloud library your phone syncs to, so one desktop run fixes every device), and scanning a very large library takes a while on the first pass since everything happens on your machine.

Method 3: Google Takeout + local dedupe + re-upload

1. Export your entire library with Google Takeout (can be hundreds of GB, split across many archives).
2. Run a local duplicate finder over the downloaded files.
3. Delete everything in Google Photos, then re-upload the cleaned library.

This is the only method that gives desktop tools something to work on — but it's a full round-trip of your library. You lose albums and shared-link structure, the export/re-upload can take days, and a mistake during "delete everything" is unrecoverable after the trash window. We list it because it works, not because we recommend it.

Which method should you use?

• A handful of duplicates you already know about → manual, done in minutes.
• Years of accumulated library clutter → extension; it's the only in-place automated option left.
• You want your photos out of Google anyway → Takeout route, since you're exporting regardless.