15

I want to remove all duplicates from my library, to consider a duplicate the song must have the same encoding, bits, duration.

Chealion
  • 8,018
  • 5
  • 37
  • 46
Aragorn
  • 1,933
  • 5
  • 22
  • 34
  • How does "Display Exact Duplicates" not let you clean out songs that meet your criteria? – bmike Nov 15 '11 at 19:11

4 Answers4

10

You can use the default iTunes engine to find duplicates :

File > Display Duplicates

duplicates

Or, use a third-party software like TuneUp or TidySongs.

Studer
  • 8,779
  • 5
  • 38
  • 38
  • I remember some one later asked the same question but can't find it, also you trick don't work fine fore me iTunes Display Duplicate worked buggy for me. – Am1rr3zA Sep 15 '10 at 12:40
  • I was also sure someone already posted this question, but I, too, cannot find it anymore. At least, I'm not crazy ! I know the built-in functionality is a buggy, that's why I added links to 3rd-party softwares. – Studer Sep 15 '10 at 13:40
  • Another alternative I can highly recommend: Dupin – Chealion Sep 15 '10 at 17:09
  • 1
    I was aware of this option, but wanted an automatic way to remove the duplicates – Aragorn Sep 16 '10 at 02:39
  • This approach (at least as of 10.5.1) will not do what the questions asks: songs do not need to have the "same encoding" to be recognized as duplicates. – orome Nov 15 '11 at 18:41
  • Note the use of Display 'Exact' Duplicates: support.apple.com/kb/ht2905 Then filter/compair the duplicates and look by looking at date added, bit rate, and size. – Jonnybojangles Nov 22 '11 at 05:35
  • TidySongs has been discontinued according to their website, and so the link should perhaps be removed from this answer. They recommend that people use Rinse My Music instead: http://www.rinsemymusic.com/ – garethm Jan 04 '12 at 13:28
5

"Show duplicates" been removed from iTunes 11. As we are left with having to use 3rd party apps to remove duplicates now, Tune Sweeper is the one I use.

bmike
  • 235,889
Mike Barrett
  • 57
  • Come on apple, this problem is completely ridiculous and rampant, fix it!!! – jlarson Dec 07 '12 at 18:17
  • 1
    This is not true, it has been moved to "View > Show Duplicate Items / (alt) Show Exact Duplicate Items" – norq Feb 03 '13 at 19:03
4

If you enable iTunes Match, duplicates will now be marked with an icon:

enter image description here

Note however that such files do not need to have the "same encoding" to be recognized as duplicates. Also note that (inconveniently) the file marked by Match as a duplicate (and thus "skipped") may not have the "best" encoding of the duplicated files. For example, you might see this:

enter image description here

In this case, in order to end up with a single song, managed by Match, with the high bit-rate song on your machine, you will need to delete both songs, leaving just the one managed by Match (the first one above)

enter image description here

and then download the "Purchased" song from iCloud

enter image description here

Community
  • 1
orome
  • 11,983
  • 64
  • 144
  • 260
  • This combined with the existing Display Exact Duplicates should help anyone use the existing tools to thin out duplicates that are exact matches. – bmike Nov 15 '11 at 19:06
3

Here are two more options: Free - DupeGuru Shareware - iDupe

I haven't tried DupeGuru yet, but iDupe worked quite well for me, though I had to batch up my checkin. First I'd select iTune's buggy "display dupes" and then I'd use that selection to run iDupe on. This sped things up quite a bit. I'm interested to see whether DupeGuru improves things by checking audio finger prints.

GreenKiwi
  • 231