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Remove Duplicate Songs from iTunes

November 12th, 2009 - How to, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting, iTunes

If you have a large iTunes library it’s really easy to inadvertently gather duplicate songs. Thankfully cleaning up and removing the duplicates from the iTunes song library is really easy, here’s how to do it:

Removing Duplicate Songs from iTunes

* Within iTunes open the ‘File’ menu
* Navigate down to ‘Show Duplicates’ (see below screenshot)
* iTunes will now show what it thinks are duplicates

remove duplicate songs itunes

This method does not always work though to find true duplicates of songs and will sometimes give you songs that are just very similar in name or artist, so you may want to try this instead:

Remove Exact Duplicates from iTunes Song Library

* Hold down the Option / ALT key
* Navigate to “File” menu
* Click on ‘Show Exact Duplicates’
* Now iTunes will display ONLY the exact duplicates (see screenshot)

show duplicate songs itunes

This list shows you the songs that iTunes thinks are duplicates, so do not delete everything in the list or else you may delete the original song that you want to keep. iTunes isn’t perfect in detecting duplicates either, it looks like it bases most of the detection on song, artist, and album names, so if you have two songs named the exact same thing but they are different iTunes will likely think it is a duplicate.

After you have cleaned up your duplicate songs, you can get the iTunes library looking like normal again by clicking the ‘Show All’ button that is highlighted in the above screenshot, or simply navigate back to the ‘File’ menu and click on ‘Show All’ where “Show Duplicates” once was.

Posted by: David Mendez

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Comments:

Comments: 15

Comment from Sororo
Time: November 12, 2009, 8:14 am

Cool tip, but, is it just me, or is this the type of thing that should have its own menu item? Or should I go through all menus holding down ALT when I need a function that might exist?

Comment from Christo
Time: November 12, 2009, 1:54 pm

Sororo is totally right, this is a really useful feature but it’s stupid to have to dig around with another key held down to find these options. I didn’t know about this and I use iTunes all the time, so thanks for the nice tip

Comment from Jared Flannagan
Time: November 12, 2009, 4:23 pm

it cracks me up that there are a bunch of software products that charge money to do this, it is free to remove your iTunes duplicates, but because Apple made it so hard to find (as the other commenters mentioned!) companies were able to create a product that just basically presses the option key for you LOL!

Comment from johnnycourage
Time: November 13, 2009, 6:34 am

can i select all and delete or does the list show the original and the duplicates?

Comment from Bruce
Time: November 13, 2009, 7:30 am

Several things: 1) It shows all songs that are the same name and artist so don’t select all and remove.

They use exact loosely. This just does a string compare on titile, artist. That’s IT! They may different times, off different albums, etc. So exact is not really exact. You really have to play or know each entry to decide if you want to remove one or the other.

Comment from Sororo
Time: November 13, 2009, 7:38 am

@Jared Flannagan
The real point is not what itunes can do, but how it tells you it can do it. I appreciate extra options being hidden to prevent long lists and clutter. I don’t think this hidden option is the reason other software is created either.

Comment from Vihelm
Time: November 13, 2009, 11:09 am

@johnnycourage,

looks like the list shows both original and duplicate, so don’t delete everything or you may delete songs you want

Comment from Kevin Killion
Time: November 14, 2009, 10:59 pm

AFAIK, this command also cares nothing about what’s been added to what playlists, or whether artwork, comments or lyrics have been attached. No attempt is made to reconcile all this when you delete a “duplicate” in this manner.

Comment from Nonny Moose
Time: November 18, 2009, 9:22 am

Great, so we know how to find the duplicates and delete them individually. How do we delete multiples? 100s of them, maybe 1000s of them at one time?

Comment from Jorge Dileva
Time: December 9, 2009, 7:56 am

Once you have your duplicates showing, you can download mdeldupfile and it will delete only the duplicates (you’ll keep only one copy of each song, you can decide if you want to keep best quality,or the smallest files if you need sapce, plus other criteria).
No need to install any additional software. Mac & Win compatible

mdeldupfile by mDecks Music
http://mdecks.com/mdeldupform.php

Comment from Shawn Koppenhoefer (DrKDev on Twitter)
Time: December 15, 2009, 4:22 am

The above tip is helpful, but you still have to examine every track to determine whether you want to keep or delete the tracks it finds and Smart Playlists aren’t perfect either.

I suggest you go read Doug’s Applescript solution to this.
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php

Write your successes (or failures) back here!
/shawn

Comment from Ariel Ramos
Time: December 15, 2009, 10:29 am

mDelDupFile is a good one, no software to install.

I just uploaded my Find Exact Duplicate list from iTunes and got my mDelDupFile back in 34 seconds (And I had 3000 duplicates in my iTunes library)

http://mdecks.com/mdeldupform.php

Comment from forumsevdam
Time: January 11, 2010, 3:29 am

AFAIK, this command also cares nothing about what’s been added to what playlists, or whether artwork, comments or lyrics have been attached. No attempt is made to reconcile all this when you delete a “duplicate” in this manner.

Comment from garfield
Time: February 20, 2010, 8:29 pm

how to remove duplicate songs from iphone it self.

Comment from Dagaza
Time: March 14, 2010, 4:49 pm

Thanks for the post, itunes also has an option to “Show Exact Duplicates” meaning you don’t have to download anything or pay for anything to properly delete you duplicates. Check out how here: http://www.dagaza.com/2010/03/delete-duplicates-in-itunes/

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November 12th, 2009