I had 12,000 photos on my Mac. Nearly 2,000 were duplicates — here’s how I found them all.

I kept postponing the cleanup for two years. When I finally did it, I recovered 23 GB and made my Photos app usable again.

I didn’t realize how bad my photo library was until I needed one photo quickly.

Ten minutes later, I was still scrolling through more than 12,000 photos.

I had thousands of screenshots, random copies, WhatsApp images, and old photos I forgot about. I realized that my Photos app stopped feeling like a memory library and started feeling like digital clutter.

So, I finally cleaned it up.

In about 4 hours, I deleted nearly 2,000 duplicate photos and recovered 23 GB of storage on my Mac.

Here’s how I did it.

How my photo library became a mess without me noticing

In my case, most of the duplicates came from three very normal habits:

First: iCloud + manual imports

Sometimes I imported photos from my iPhone with a cable because it felt faster. But iCloud was also syncing the same images automatically.

So, I quietly ended up with two copies of everything.

Second: screenshots

I work on my Mac all day, which means I take screenshots constantly. Most of them were temporary, but almost none got deleted.

And third: WhatsApp images

I use WhatsApp a lot, and I honestly didn’t realize how many random images and saved photos were sitting inside my Photos app.

Together, it turned into more than 12,000 photos, including nearly 2,000 duplicates I didn’t even notice were there.

The first cleanup attempt: The built-in Photos app

First, I decided to try the free option Apple already gives you.

Inside Photos, I opened:

Photos > Duplicates in the left sidebar under Utilities.

The app automatically scanned my library and grouped exact duplicates together, so I could compare them side by side and click Merge 2 Items to keep the best-quality version.

Honestly, the experience was better than I expected. It felt simple and safe enough.

✅What worked well:

• exact duplicate photos
• repeated imports
• duplicate Live Photos
• identical screenshots

🔺What it missed:

• near-duplicates with slightly different edits
• screenshots saved outside Photos
• images sitting in Downloads/Desktop
• files I imported directly into Finder instead of Photos

The built-in tool solved maybe 60% of the problem, so I had to dig deeper to find the rest.

Then I opened Finder and immediately regretted it

This was the point where the cleanup became painfully manual.

I started digging through Downloads, Desktop, and old exported image folders.

My folders were full of names like:

• IMG_4487(1)
• Final_v2.png
• Screenshot copy.jpg

I sorted folders by name, kind, and size to reveal obvious duplicates. It helped, but doing this manually becomes exhausting very fast. And honestly, modern workflows almost create duplicates by default.

I work across my iPhone, Mac, cloud storage, messaging apps, and screenshots every single day. Somewhere along the way, duplicate files just became part of the background.

And the real problem was that I never built a system for cleanup in the first place.

What finally helped me clean the entire mess

After trying the Photos app and manually digging through Finder, I opened CleanMyMac’s duplicate finder to check the rest of my Mac.

It found around 2,200 additional duplicates, including similar images the Photos app missed.

What helped most was the visibility.

I could actually see why certain files were grouped together instead of blindly deleting things one by one. That made the cleanup feel much less overwhelming.

Before deleting thousands of photos, I did this first

I’ll be honest: clearing out thousands of photos at once felt stressful. Everything looks easy until you suddenly think, “Wait… did I just delete the wrong photo?”

So before deleting anything major, I backed up my library first.

I also relied heavily on the Recently Deleted folder inside Photos. Knowing everything would stay there for 30 days made the cleanup feel much less risky.

And before confirming large batches, I started checking random samples manually.

I’d open both versions side by side and make sure the one being kept was actually the better-quality image.

The result

After deleting useless files:

• 12,247 photos > 10,200
• 23 GB recovered
• Time spent: about 4 hours

My Photos app finally felt searchable again, and my Mac felt lighter, too.

3 habits I’m keeping now

To stop the same thing happening again, I’ve added three habits:

1. I stopped importing photos twice

Now I use only iCloud, no more cable imports anymore.

2. I clean screenshots once a month

Screenshots pile up very fast, so I decided to spend 10 minutes deleting the unnecessary ones.

3. I check my photo library more often

It’s better to do a small cleanup every few months than a huge cleanup two years later.

Till next time.