iPhone showing duplicate photos, some undeletable, very annoying

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Level 3

537 points

iPhone showing duplicate photos, some undeletable, very annoying

Good day. Im trying to figure out why I have so many duplicate photos on my phone. One I can delete the other can not. It's gotta be an issue with syncing on the computer photos app but i dunno. It's not iCloud cause have that turned off. the amount of duplicates is insane, goes back years and I cant see how to fix. Yet it seems from July on ward this year there is no duplicates. Only thing i can see on a difference ion my phone, is the image I am able too delete has a normal file name, say IMG_5000 where as at the one I can delete has long long name of numbers letters and dashes . Any help would be greatly appreciated

iPhone 14 Pro Max

Posted on Dec 1, 2025 6:14 AM

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Answer 1

Nathan Gogol Author

Level 3

537 points

Dec 1, 2025 8:07 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

All the pictures are taken by my phone. I replied to this post cause couldn't figure out how to edit that i found its the finder sync thats causing this.

'So playing around a bit more with it. This morning i synced via photos app open mat mac, all good. No weird duplicates after July 22 this year. So then i proceeded to to back up my phone via finder as i always do as i don't use icloud for back up. I seen that i had phots selected to sync. i synced, now all my stuff from July 22nd onward now has a duplicate. So frustrating, so obviously thats the culprit, Ive turned it off and made a mental note only update photos with in the photos app on mac. Now that being said how to I clean this mess up'

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2025 8:00 AM in response to Nathan Gogol

Are all these pictures from your own phone, or did they come from a computer transfer? Pictures transferred from a computer, especially those in an album named "From My Mac" are treated as temporary, and they are deleted with the next sync-- if that sync doesn't include them.

Some duplicates are just different formats, like IMG_1234.jpg and IMG_1234.heic. They look like duplicates to us, but not so for the computer.

The long names, like AD67EE6F-3B95-4AAF-9F67-4BB339A94F83.heic, are unique identifiers assigned by Photos, and they shouldn't show up unless there's been a crash or something unusual.

Do you have a backup of your Photos Library?

One way to get rid of the pictures that you can't delete is to turn on iCloud. It will erase all the pictures that iCloud can't take before it starts to upload all the others. So you just wait for the upload to start, and quickly stop it.

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Answer 3

Nathan Gogol Author

Level 3

537 points

Dec 1, 2025 7:48 AM in response to Nathan Gogol

So playing around a bit more with it. This morning i synced via photos app open mat mac, all good. No weird duplicates after July 22 this year. So then i proceeded to to back up my phone via finder as i always do as i don't use icloud for back up. I seen that i had phots selected to sync. i synced, now all my stuff from July 22nd onward now has a duplicate. So frustrating, so obviously thats the culprit, Ive turned it off and made a mental note only update photos with in the photos app on mac. Now that being said how to I clean this mess up

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Answer 4

Dec 2, 2025 8:27 AM in response to Nathan Gogol

Did you try the "turning on iCloud Photos" trick?

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Answer 5

Nathan Gogol Author

Level 3

537 points

Dec 1, 2025 5:44 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Hi, yes sorry about the typo, not even 100% what i meant but i think i mean iPhone. Anyways the pic that is deletable is HEIF with abnormal image name IMG_6271, the duplicate i cant delete off my phone is also a HEIF but its image name is one those long ones you mention that are unique identifiers assigned by Photos. So came home, since via finder with photos since photos disable now in finder, synced didn't make new duplicates but didn't remove the non deletable photos from my phone. So now i finally know what was causing the issue but still have every photo pretty well duplicated. yet what's weird is it does see them as duplicates as if you go to the duplicate album it only has like 22, doesn't see these non deletable photos as duplicates. Any help greatly appreciated, thanks

note: some files are jpeg too, basically every photo is duplicated al there may back too fall off 2022, before that doest seem to be duplicated

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