28 comments

• 

  Anthony Robinson

  9 months ago

  I think we all know about the find duplicates feature...the point is who wants to sit and manually select every duplicated and delete them one by one. Is there a magic button that says "find all duplicates and delete them for me?"
  
  I've got easily over 400 dupes and do not relish having to sit and manually remove them.
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• 

  davak

  9 months ago

  The "Show Duplicates" feature (iTunes -> File -> Show Duplicates) only guesses files that are the same. Frequently, it will show two tunes that are similar but not exactly the same-- Live versus album, for example. Because of this, it's always going to be dangerous to try to develop some automatic way to remove duplicates using this feature. Thus, there is not a "find all duplicates and delete them for me" magic button.
  
  Several paid software packages exist that will help with this. If somebody posts a free solution, we'll be glad to publish it.
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• 

  hanna

  2 months ago

  From the help:
  
  Choose File > Show Duplicates to find every instance of a song from the same artist from any album in your collection. For example, the same song could appear on the artist's album and on a movie soundtrack.
  
  Press the Shift key and choose File > Show Exact Duplicates to find multiple copies of the same song (if, for example, you inadvertently imported the song twice).
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• 

  sysadmn

  9 months ago

  Another PITA about Apple's Find Duplicates is that it does not detect when two entries point to the same file. It will happily let you move the file to the recycle bin. Then the next time you access the remaining entry, you get the "Cannot find file" dialog. Way to go Apple - comparing paths (or, on OSX inodes) is sooo hard.
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• 

  davak

  9 months ago

  I think everybody agrees with this. I think that's why there is such a huge collection of software out there that tries to fix the problem with dupes. I was really sad that apple did not take the time to improve iTunes with version 8 instead of just adding more and more features.
  
  Removing duplicates safely would help a ton of people. However, the genius feature means that apple will make more money... You can see where the priorities are. :(
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• 

  Joe

  8 months ago

  Thanks a bunch for this, i am relitvely new at itunes and was unaware of this feature...
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• 

  joshua

  7 months ago

  use the program duplicate finder. you can select weather to find the duplicates of the same size or name in the thing with artist. i use it all the time and i love it.
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• 

  Luke

  7 months ago

  What I did was copy the duplicate play list, then copy it into a folder I made. All the duplicates were on one side of the folder because it had the name and a number, and and all the normal ones were on the other. All i had to do was delete the left side and it was done.
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• 

  Gavin

  7 months ago

  not sure how that took care of the dup files in your itunes library
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• 

  joe blow

  6 months ago

  when you do that first manual step, just select send to trash or recycle bin, respective to your os, and skip all the rest.
  
  that is unless you're not sure if the itunes library file duplicate points to the same file on your drive.
  
  itunes is funky. in it's native library, you only see links to the actual files. sometimes when you're moving between machines and trying to get your library organized, you might inadvertantly make dupicate "itunes library links," but not duplicates of the actual files.
  
  thats when his manual method comes in handy. by not selecting the "send to trash" option after selecting your duplicates and hitting delete, but selecting the "keep files" option, you only delete itunes duplicate links. then, once all your dupe links are gone, he has you tell itunes "hey! take all these links and copy the linked files here" by selecting the entire library and dragging it to another folder.
  
  tada! itunes made a copy of your library without dupe files or library links.
  delete your old library, delete all links in itunes, then import the copied file.
  
  if you like, you can tell itunes to copy them into the itunes folder, meaning it doesnt link to the folder you're importing, but to a copy in a different folder.
  
  by doing that, you get a nice neat itunes organized folder system complete with a nice neat dupe free itunes library.
  
  
  sorry if i repeated a few things.... but i'm sure someone wanted to know something here..... whether or not they will ever come across this, i do not know :)
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• 

  Sam

  6 months ago

  I'm running a laptop with windows so couldn't run Doug Adam's scripts for Mac. Another way to remove duplicate itunes entries is:
  
  1. Remove all tracks from itunes (select all and press delete)
  2. Select not to remove the actual music file
  3. When your library is empty again, select 'file \ add folders to library' and select the MyMusic folder
  
  It didn't even take that long because the files are all in the right format, itunes just has to find them again. N.B. I dont purchase music at the itunes online store so dont know how this will affect your bought mp3 tracks.
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• 

  hanna

  2 months ago

  But you lose the original Date Added context.
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• 

  Ryan

  5 months ago

  Another easy way is to simply uninstall and then re-install iTunes. You can then import a single library instead of dealing with duplicate files. I recently changed my music directory to a different folder and had all of the same files imported to my library again, though only the recently imported files are playable. Really irritating, but I think this will fix it.
  
  Anyway, less chance of loss in the process of dragging and dropping. And it's free.
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• 

  Jordan Hewitt

  5 months ago

  i wrote an autohotkey script to select every other song in the "show duplicates" window very very quickly.
  
  ===================================
  SetTitleMatchMode, 2
  
  ^t::
  
  WinActivate, iTunes
  Sleep, 1000
  
  Loop {
  
  SendEvent {Control down}
  
  y = 94
  Loop {
  SendEvent {Click 1000, %y%}
  if (y > 930) {
  break
  }
  y += 34
  }
  
  PixelGetColor, done, 1237, 926
  if (done != 0xBDBDBD) {
  break
  }
  
  SendEvent {Click 1237, 935, 50}
  
  }
  
  SendEvent {Control up}
  
  return
  ================================================
  
  
  
  Very simple to use, but you will have to adjust the numbers to fit your screen size, unless you are in 1680x1050 like me. You also of course need to download autohotkey, but i highly suggest that for anyone anyway.
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• 

  efef

  4 months ago

  I have a g15 keyboard so I have a macro button, when do I type this in just while I am looknig at itunes?
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• 

  jon

  1 week ago

  i made an auto hot key, it goes to the tray, but nothing happens.
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• 

  jim

  5 months ago

  Be careful about iDupe and don't get duped--It's for Macs ONLY. If you have Windows do not buy it, you'll just be making an $8 donation.
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• 

  efef

  4 months ago

  I followed the above steps for manual removal except I used an automatic itunes library dupe remover so I didnt have to sift through 488 dupes, program was called "Dupe eliminator for itunes" Ran that then followed the steps above. Vista 63bit
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• 

  Emily

  2 months ago

  How much does that cost though? Is there anything free?
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• 

  Dan

  4 months ago

  Why is iTunes creating the duplicates to begin with? This is so incredibly frustrating. This software is so crappy. It has done this on every computer I own. If I didn't own an iPod Touch I would get rid of iTunes all together. Can't you Apple software developers get this simple piece of software working correctly?
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• 

  Pralz

  2 months ago

  If i remember correctly... iTunes is QUICKTIME's child... Apple just bought QuickTime to own iTunes. It's not Apple who created iTunes, it is QuickTime.
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• 

  Brett

  2 months ago

  I am struggling with another twist on the dupe problem. I recently installed a network drive at home and want all computers/notebooks to be able to access the same iTunes music folder on the network drive, for their iTunes library.
  
  I set about transferring the files that had built up on 2 of the computers onto the main drive, plus the collection on my iPod, which had become separated from its mother due to a drive crash (alot of the songs were already dupes of the other libraries). The problem is, the songs from the iPod have copied directly to the main folder, not in organised into albums, whilst the ones from the computers are saved within their respective albums.
  
  I've ended up with no less than 5 dupes in some cases, in a 30Gb library. I have moved the default folder referenced by iTunes to the network drive, however when I try to 'add to library' it still tries to copy them back to my local HD, which I am trying to avoid (and besides don't have the space!). How can I set up iTunes on each of the computers to only import links to the songs on the network drive to its library, and also remove the dupes??
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• 

  Pellet

  1 month ago

  LOL how wrong you are Pralz, iTunes is created exclusively by Apple and Quicktime was created exclusively by Apple from the start.
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• 

  Emily

  2 months ago

  Actually it's probably because you need to uncheck a box which automatically makes duplicates of every song you save in itunes, you have to Go to Edit -> Preferences.
  Switch to 'Advanced' tab.
  Uncheck 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library'.
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• 

  Emily

  2 months ago

  Is there anything free or for UK users (not sold only in US) and does the first method you mentioned get rid of dead links as well, because I have about 4000 of those somehow!
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• 

  Christa

  1 month ago

  Just a warning: the hyped program "iFix" to de-duplicate itunes hasn't loaded on any of my or my friends' computers; it just crashes before install.
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• 

  Sean

  1 week ago

  I ran an 8 double one D file dumper and it seemed to clear the problem up in a jiffy. The only problem is that I have to engage the manual choke to get my monitor to work in cold weather!
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• 

  tonybaloney

  1 week ago

  your "easy" approach isn't very easy if you have 20 GB of duplicates.
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