How to Identify and Remove Duplicates: Documents, Photos, and Videos

Written By Jill Rivers

During my March YouTube presentation How to Digitize and Organize Important Documents & Keepsakes: Tools for Safeguarding What Matters, a great question came up: What’s the best way to find duplicates—documents, photos, and videos—and clean them up efficiently? It’s something many of us struggle with, especially when organizing large digital collections.

🗂 Documents

The best defense against duplicate documents starts with consistent naming conventions. If you always name your files using a clear and structured format (for example, 2023_TaxReturn_Final.pdf), it’s easier to spot unintentional duplicates or outdated versions.

Another tip: if your documents are scanned or saved as PDFs, make sure they’re OCR-enabled (Optical Character Recognition). This allows you to search within the document text, which not only helps with organizing but also makes it easier to detect duplicates based on content, not just the file name.

🛠 Tools to try:

  • PDF Expert (Mac) – great for viewing, editing, and searching PDFs

  • Adobe Acrobat Pro – enables OCR and batch processing

  • File Explorer / Finder search + sorting by name/date – basic but useful!

🎥 Videos

Duplicate videos often hide in plain sight because of vague or default file names like IMG_1234.MOV. If you’ve transferred videos from different devices or cloud services, chances are high you’ve got some overlap.

🛠 Tools that can help:

  • Duplicate Cleaner Pro (Windows) – works for videos, images, and music

  • Cisdem Duplicate Finder (Mac & PC) – can scan and identify duplicate videos even if filenames differ, using content analysis

  • Gemini 2 (Mac) – detects duplicates and similar files, including video clips

💡 Pro Tip: Preview duplicates before deleting—video files are often large, so clearing them out saves a lot of space.

📸 Photos

When I organize printed photos for scanning, I often remove duplicate or near-identical prints before scanning begins. This helps save time and scanning costs—and reduces clutter in your final digital collection.

Once digital, you can use specialized software to find and eliminate duplicates or near-duplicates (like burst shots or edited versions).

🛠 Tools That Can Help:

  • PhotoSweeper (Mac) – a powerful app that finds duplicate and similar images using a range of criteria

  • Cisdem Duplicate Finder (Mac & PC) – yes, it works here too! It’s one of the few cross-platform tools that performs consistently well for photos, videos, documents, and music

📱For iPhone users, it’s never been easier to clean up: Watch my tutorial here. 

  • Go to Photos > Utilities > Duplicates — Apple’s built-in feature identifies and merges duplicate images with just a few taps. Look at my demo in my June 19, 2025 newsletter.

    Don't receive my newsletter yet? Click on any Contact Me button on my website, and I’ll be happy to add you! My newsletters are filled with helpful tips and tricks for organizing printed and digital photos, protecting your privacy, and so much more.

Jill Rivers https://www.enjoythephotomoments.com
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