If iPhone is not showing Duplicate Photos or if Duplicates Photo Album itself is not showing up in Photos App, the problem could be due to the Photo Library not yet being indexed by iPhone and other reasons.
In general, the default setting on iPhone is to automatically identify Duplicate Photos and place them in a separate Photo Album, clearly named as “Duplicates” within the Photos App.
This feature allows you to Free Up Storage Space, either by manually deleting Duplicate Photos or by using Merge Duplicates option as available within the Photos App on your iPhone.
Duplicate Photos Not Showing on iPhone
If your iPhone is not showing Duplicate photos or if the Duplicate Photos Album is missing from iPhone, you should be able to fix the problem using the following methods.
Before going ahead with other steps, restart your device and see if this helps in fixing the problem.
1. iPhone Cannot Identify All Duplicate Photos
While iPhone is good at identifying duplicate photos appearing on your device from social media accounts, it is not yet capable of identifying identical looking photos taken by the camera Front and the Rear Cameras of iPhone.
For example, if you take multiple photos of the same Location, the same Person or the same Object, they will be saved on your device with different file names and won’t be identified as duplicate photos by iPhone.
The only way to remove such Duplicate Photos is to go through all the photos located on your iPhone and manually delete the duplicate ones.
2. Show Both Photos & Videos in Duplicates Folder
Make sure that the Filter in Duplicates Album is not set to hide Photos.
1. Open Photos App > tap on Albums tab in bottom menu.
2. On the Albums screen, scroll down to “Utilities” section and tap on Duplicates folder.
3. In Duplicates Folder, tap on 3-dots icon located at top-right corner and select Filter in the drop-down menu.
4. On the next screen, select All Items and tap Done.
This should ensure that both Photos and Videos appear in “Duplicates” Photo Album on your iPhone.
4. Create Duplicate Photos on iPhone
The problem might be due to Duplicate photos not really being available on your iPhone. To confirm, manually create some duplicate Photos and see if the “Duplicates” Album appears in the Photos app.
1. Open Photos App > select a Photo that you want to Duplicate.
2. Once the Photo is selected, tap on 3-dots icon located at top-right corner and select Duplicate in the drop-down menu.
3. You can repeat the above steps to create some more duplicate Photos.
After this, the “Duplicates” Photo Album containing the photos that you just duplicated should appear in Photos App, within the next 12 to 24 hours.
5. Install Updates
Make sure that your device is upto date with the latest iOS and App updates.
1. Go to Settings > General > Software Update.
2. On the Software update screen, tap on Download and Install (in case a software update is available).
6. Index Photo Library
In order to find Duplicate photos, iPhone periodically goes through the process of indexing the Photo Library.
The process of indexing Photos takes place when iPhone is locked and connected to a power source for charging, this happens every few hours or days, depending the size of your Photo Library.
Hence, connect your device for charging a couple of times and you may find it bringing up the Duplicates Album in the Photos App.