7 Best Apps to Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone

Do you regularly open your iPhone’s Photos app and realize you’re staring at multiple identical or nearly identical shots of your dog, five versions of the same group photo, or endless accidental screenshots you forgot to delete? Maybe you’re also dealing with the “Storage Almost Full” warning and realize that keeping countless duplicates on your device isn’t sustainable.

Fortunately, you can use the best photo cleanup apps for iPhone to scan your library and get rid of unnecessary duplicates with ease. We tested many popular duplicate photo remover apps to see which ones actually work, and this article presents our top 7 picks based on their scan speed, accuracy, ease of use, and whether the free versions deliver real value.

Do You Still Need a Duplicate Photo Remover App if iPhone Has a Duplicates Tool?

Since iOS 16, iPhones have had a built-in Duplicates album that can find and merge or delete duplicate photos, so why download a third-party duplicate photo remover app in the first place?

The biggest issue is that the built-in Duplicates feature only flags exact matches. If you have five nearly identical shots from a burst sequence or similar photos with minor differences, the built-in tool won’t affect them. But those “basically the same” images eat up just as much storage.

Another limitation is timing. If you accidentally duplicate a photo or download the same image twice, it won’t show up in the Duplicates album right away. Apple’s own support page warns that indexing takes time. Sometimes it’s quick, other times it drags on for days. And if you browse Reddit or Apple forums, you’ll find plenty of frustrated users saying the feature doesn’t work at all or only catches a fraction of their duplicates.

The best photo cleaner apps from third parties overcome these limitations by scanning your entire library on demand using smart algorithms to detect similar-looking photos, not just pixel-perfect copies. Several quality options are completely free, so there’s really no reason them an easy upgrade from Apple’s basic tool.

Top 7 Apps to Delete Duplicate Photos on iPhone

We tested dozens of apps to find the best duplicate photo finder for iPhone, and these seven stood out. Each review below covers the key features, what worked well in our testing, and any limitations we noticed. This section is structured as a concise highlight reel that gets straight to the point since you can always check the full feature list on each app’s App Store page.

1. Clever Cleaner: AI Cleanup App

Clever Cleaner is the best duplicate photo finder for iPhone we tested, which makes the fact that it’s completely free that much more welcome and surprising. When we say that it’s completely free, we mean that there are no subscriptions, no “Pro” upgrades, and no annoying ads.

Even if your photo library is very large (10,000+ photos), you can expect Clever Cleaner to scan it in less than 5 minutes. The duplicates can be reviewed in the Similars tab. You can either go through them manually or click the Smart Cleanup button and let the app’s smart algorithms automatically move duplicates to Trash for you.

More cleaning can be done in the Heavies, Screenshots, and Lives tabs. The Heavies tab lets you delete or compress large videos (and delete large photos, though images are rarely big enough to fall into this category), the Screenshots tab is, obviously, a place where you can easily get rid of unnecessary screenshots, and the Lives tab lets you compress your Live Photos so they take up much less space on your device. Just select the Live Photos you want to compress, tap Compress, and choose whether to keep the originals in Trash or delete them completely to free up space immediately.

There’s also the Swipe tab, which stands out (which is why it’s placed in the center of the UI) because it’s designed for manual review. Photos are organized chronologically by month, and you simply swipe left to delete or right to keep. This gives you complete control, allowing you to review everything yourself instead of relying on AI suggestions. It’s fast, intuitive, and honestly kind of addictive once you get into a rhythm, which is especially useful when you need to pick the best shots after a photo session.

💰 Pricing: Clever Cleaner is completely free (no trial period, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions). Built by the same team behind Disk Drill, a well-known Mac data recovery tool, Clever Cleaner will remain free forever for early adopters.

2. Cleaner Guru: Clean Up Storage

Cleaner Guru is a solid all-around best photo cleanup app for iPhone that’s designed as a full storage optimization tool, but its duplicate detection features are what we’re focusing on here.

During testing, Cleaner Guru caught both exact duplicates and near-matches with impressive accuracy, grouping photos intelligently and automatically selecting the best version from each set while marking the rest for deletion. It’s one of the better detection algorithms we’ve seen.

Being a general-purpose cleanup app, the interface can feel cluttered with so many features competing for attention, and it’s not immediately obvious what to tackle first when you open the app.

Beyond duplicates, Cleaner Guru offers a Swipe Photos mode that lets you manually review your entire library using more or less the same Tinder-style gestures as Clever Cleaner. The video management section sorts your library videos by file size, and there’s also a built-in compression tool (found within the video organization menu, which isn’t immediately obvious) that reduces file sizes without noticeable quality loss.

Cleaner Guru extends its cleanup tools to contacts and email too. You can merge duplicate contacts, delete incomplete entries, and even unsubscribe from email newsletters in bulk while deleting all messages from specific senders. These features work as advertised, though the contacts tool could be more intuitive. The app even includes widgets for monitoring storage and battery usage, plus a Secret Folder for password-protecting private photos.

💰 Pricing: 7-day free trial with automatic subscription activation. After trial: $7.99/week or $39.99/year. You must cancel at least 24 hours before trial ends to avoid charges.

3. CleanMy®Phone: Storage Cleaner

CleanMy®Phone comes from MacPaw, the developer behind CleanMyMac, a well-known macOS optimization tool known for its great user interface design. It’s no surprise then that this is easily one of the most beautifully designed best duplicate photo finder for iOS apps we’ve tested. The animations, transitions, and overall layout feel premium in every way.

CleanMy®Phone offers automatic cleanup with one-tap functionality, and it visually breaks down the scanning process so you can see exactly what it’s working on in real time. The scan itself is incredibly fast, so you won’t be sitting around waiting for it to finish for too long.

The duplicate and similar photo detection works decently most of the time. The AI groups photos into clear categories and correctly identifies many duplicates and near-matches. However, we noticed occasional misgroupings where the app lumped together photos of different people or poses, which means you can’t always trust the bulk selection.

Another issue is that CleanMy®Phone doesn’t show total recoverable storage in one place. Instead, you have to check different sections individually, which feels disjointed and makes it hard to gauge how much space you’re actually saving. For a storage cleaner, not knowing exactly how many gigabytes you can recover is a significant oversight.

The app includes some extra features like blurred image detection, screenshot cleanup, and AI-based photo organization by location or event. There’s also a “sensitive file protection” option to prevent accidental deletion of important photos. What it doesn’t have: video compression or Live Photo compression.

💰 Pricing: Free version with severe limitations (screenshots and basic cleanup only). Paid plans: $9.99/month, $49.99/year, or $99.99 lifetime license. Requires iOS 16.0 or later.

4. Hyper Cleaner: Clean Up Photos

Hyper Cleaner attempts to turn photo cleanup into a daily ritual. The app’s signature “Memories” feature organizes your library by months and days. It then serves up photos from the past so you can reminisce while decluttering. Each day, you get a selection of photos from that date in previous years, and you can swipe left to delete or right to keep.

The duplicate detection worked reasonably well at identifying exact copies and similar-looking shots during our testing. The AI automatically selects what it thinks is the best version from each group, which saves time if you trust its judgment. However, we noticed the interface felt a bit sluggish at times, and based on user reviews across the App Store, reliability issues have been a recurring complaint.

Hyper Cleaner offers a nice selection of extra features. It identifies blurry images, finds forgotten screenshots cluttering your library, and includes video compression to shrink large files without noticeable quality loss. The app also throws in extras like an ad blocker, a secret folder for sensitive files, contact organization tools, and a battery widget.

💰 Pricing: 3-day free trial, then $3.99/week, $4.99/week (alternate pricing), or $29.99/year.

5. Boost Cleaner – Clean Up Smart

Boost Cleaner covers the basics (duplicate photo detection, contact management, and general storage cleanup) without trying to be flashy or overloaded with features.

The app to delete duplicate photos worked reasonably well when we tested it, though the results weren’t as comprehensive as what we saw with top performers like Clever Cleaner or Cleaner Guru. Boost Cleaner successfully identified obvious duplicates and some similar-looking photos, but it missed others that competing apps caught. The detection algorithm feels more conservative, which means you’re less likely to accidentally delete something important.

Finding the duplicate scanner and initiating a scan takes just a few taps, and the app organizes results into clear categories: duplicate photos, similar selfies, Live Photos, and GIFs. You can also filter photos by date and location, which is handy if you’re trying to clean up specific events or trips.

In addition to photo cleanup, Boost Cleaner offers contact management tools that let you merge duplicate contacts, delete incomplete entries, and back up your contact list. There’s also a secret album for password-protecting private photos and a private browser for secure web browsing, though these feel more like bonus features than core functionality.

💰 Pricing: 3-day free trial with full access to all features. After trial: $5.99/week, $12.99/month, or $39.99/year. Requires iOS 14.0 or later.

6. Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner

Developed by Codeway Dijital, Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner covers photos, videos, contacts, and even email cleanup, so it’s a true all-in-one storage solution.

When using it as an app to delete duplicate photos, Cleanup: Phone Storage Cleaner automatically selects duplicates for deletion, though you can review each set individually if you want more control. The detection algorithms perform well, but we’ve noticed misclassifications.

The interface looks clean and modern, but the user experience could use improvement. For example, the swipe-to-sort feature (swipe left to delete, right to keep) isn’t immediately obvious. You only discover it through a pop-up notification. Once you know it’s there, it works smoothly across different sections.

The email cleaner part of the app can recognize spam, promotions, updates, and other junk mail. You can preview full emails before deleting them, and the categorization is genuinely helpful for bulk cleanup. The contacts cleaner lets you merge duplicate entries and delete incomplete contacts, with a preview of the merged result before you commit.

💰 Pricing: 7-day free trial with automatic subscription activation. After trial: $7.99/month or $29.99/year.

7. Remo Duplicate Photos Remover

Remo Duplicate Photos Remover is clearly different from everything else on this list. The interface looks dated, the feature set is bare-bones, and there are no flashy extras or modern design elements. Despite these downsides, we’re convinced that it’s worth recommending because it’s a genuinely free app to remove duplicate photos on iPhone with no hidden costs, and it still works on very old iOS versions.

The app scans your library and organizes results into two categories: “Exact” duplicates (pixel-perfect matches) and “Similar” duplicates (photos that look alike but aren’t identical). It then automatically marks duplicates for deletion and saves what it considers the best version from each group, though you can manually adjust selections if you disagree with its choices.

It’s worth noting that Remo sometimes miscategorizes exact duplicates as “similar” duplicates. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it means you’ll want to review both categories to make sure you’re catching everything.

Remo includes some useful tools like photo preview, image details viewer, and the ability to mark or unmark individual photos or entire groups. That said, there’s no ability to compress videos, no swipe gestures for manual review, and no additional storage management features.

💰 Pricing: Completely free. No trial period, no subscriptions, no hidden costs. Just download and use. Requires iOS 9.0 or later, making it compatible with extremely old iPhone models.

How We Made Our List of the Best Duplicate Photo Finders for iPhone

We didn’t just download a handful of app to delete similar photos and call it a day. Our testing process involved scanning real iPhone libraries with thousands of photos across multiple devices, ranging from newer models to older iPhones.

So what separated the winners from the apps we left out? Four main criteria shaped our selection:

• 🎯 Detection accuracy was the most important factor. An app to delete similar photos needs to actually find them, obviously. We looked at how well each app caught exact duplicates (the easy part) and similar-looking photos (where most apps struggle). Apps that missed obvious duplicates or flagged completely unrelated photos as “similar” didn’t make the cut.
• ⚡ Scan speed also mattered. Some apps took a really long time to scan a 10,000-photo library, while the best performers finished in under five minutes. With that being said, we didn’t automatically disqualify slower apps (Remo Duplicate Photos Remover is notably slow but still made the list) since most people don’t mind waiting if the wait is worth it.
• 🆓 Free version or trial availability was another major factor. If an app charged $40/year but offered zero way to test it first, that’s a dealbreaker for most people. We prioritized completely free apps that remove duplicate photos without limitations (like Clever Cleaner) or at least generous trial periods that let you test all features before committing. Apps with severely limited free versions or deceptive “free trials” that auto-charge after 24 hours got dinged in our scoring.
• 🧭 Interface and usability rounded out our evaluation. If an app required a tutorial just to figure out where the scan button was located, that’s a problem. We looked for clean, intuitive layouts where features were easy to find and navigation felt natural. Also, apps with smooth animations and responsive gestures scored higher than clunky, outdated interfaces.

We also considered extra features like video compression, contact cleanup, and email management, but these were bonuses rather than requirements. An app could still earn a top spot by excelling at duplicate detection even without bells and whistles.

So, What’s the Best Photo Cleaner App for iPhone?

If you’re here for the short answer: the best app to delete duplicate and similar photos on iPhone is Clever Cleaner. If you haven’t decided yet and need more context, here’s a quick comparison table that breaks down how each app performed in our testing. We scored each one based on four key factors: detection quality (how well it finds both exact and similar photos), scanning speed, free version availability, and interface design.

Clever Cleaner is clearly the winner because it earned perfect scores across all categories, which is something no other photo-deleting app has been able to achieve.

If Clever Cleaner doesn’t meet your specific needs for some reason, Cleaner Guru and CleanMy®Phone are solid runners-up. Both offer excellent detection quality and fast scanning, but their free versions have some limitations (Clever Cleaner is completely unlimited despite being the best app to clean up photos).

Remo Duplicate Photos Remover ranks as the worst of the best photo cleanup apps, but it’s actually the only other app that deletes duplicate photos for free besides Clever Cleaner. It also runs on very old versions of iOS, so it’s worth considering if you’re on a tight budget or running an older iPhone model.

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