How to Remove duplicate files from your iTunes media library

Contributed by bulletcatcher221

Tagged: Entertainment

Are you tired of starting up your iPod and starting your playlist to find the same song playing over and over caused by duplicate files in your Itunes library or in windows media player? Here are a few tips to help.

If the only problem is duplicate *tracks* in iTunes (not duplicate files on the hard drive), the solution is easy – use iTunes built-in “Find Duplicates” feature to find and remove the duplicate tracks. There are also scripts on Doug Adam’s iTunes Scripts website to perform this. I synchronize my Libraries all the time (between Mac OS X and Windows, actually) and run into this a lot.

However, if the *files* (on the hard drive) are duplicated (because of different folder/file names), then the solution is tedious and requires lots of temp disk space.

Manual Solution:

1. Use iTunes built-in “Find Duplicates” feature to find and remove the duplicate tracks in iTunes – this doesn’t affect your drive yet).
2. Highlight every track in your iTunes Library (still in iTunes, not on your drive) and then drag the tracks from iTunes to a new Folder on your drive.
3. This will make a complete copy of your Library (without any duplicates)
4. Delete every track in iTunes and every file in your original Library on your drive.
5. Then, either move the contents of your new Folder to your Library folder and drop the Library Folder back into iTunes, or just tell iTunes that your Library has moved to the new Folder.

You’ll now have a new Library with no duplicates.

Some other solutions…

Enter the shareware iDupe (it’ll set you back $8). It claims to dedupe your music collection intelligently by looking at more criteria than Apple’s offering and allowing you to adjust certain settings.It helps tremendously in removing duplicate files from your music library. I find that the default setting does a good job of identifying duplicates, erring on the side of being slightly conservative IMO. (This is a ‘good thing’ !)

The user can choose to delete duplicates from the currently selected Playlist, from the entire Library, and from the hard drive. The docs suggest that it works best with limited chunks of files (under 2000), so I have created a “TEMP” Playlist and move 3-500 tracks at a time into that list. It’s not exceptionally fast at deleting files, but it does the job like nothing else I’ve tried.

94 Comments -

Anthony Robinson said on October 3, 2008

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.
davak said on October 3, 2008

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.
sysadmn said on October 4, 2008

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.
davak said on October 4, 2008

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. :(
Joe said on October 23, 2008

Thanks a bunch for this, i am relitvely new at itunes and was unaware of this feature…
joshua said on November 10, 2008

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.
Luke said on November 12, 2008

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.
Gavin said on November 14, 2008

not sure how that took care of the dup files in your itunes library
joe blow said on December 25, 2008

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 :)
Sam said on December 29, 2008

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.
Ryan said on January 14, 2009

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.
Jordan Hewitt said on January 28, 2009

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 1680×1050 like me. You also of course need to download autohotkey, but i highly suggest that for anyone anyway.
jim said on February 3, 2009

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.
efef said on February 10, 2009

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
efef said on February 10, 2009

I have a g15 keyboard so I have a macro button, when do I type this in just while I am looknig at itunes?
Dan said on February 14, 2009

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?
hanna said on April 11, 2009

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).
hanna said on April 11, 2009

But you lose the original Date Added context.
Pralz said on April 22, 2009

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.
Brett said on April 22, 2009

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??
Emily said on April 27, 2009

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!
Emily said on April 27, 2009

How much does that cost though? Is there anything free?
Emily said on April 27, 2009

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’.
Christa said on May 20, 2009

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.
Pellet said on June 3, 2009

LOL how wrong you are Pralz, iTunes is created exclusively by Apple and Quicktime was created exclusively by Apple from the start.
Sean said on June 25, 2009

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!
jon said on June 26, 2009

i made an auto hot key, it goes to the tray, but nothing happens.
tonybaloney said on June 27, 2009

your “easy” approach isn’t very easy if you have 20 GB of duplicates.
Anonymous said on July 27, 2009

I Tried… Audio Comparer but did not find how it works(poor design)… in that case Duplicate Finder 2009 is the winner for me…. its so simple to find and remove duplicate files in this program…
Anonymous said on August 28, 2009

iDupe is for Mac OS X only, as stated on the product page. It will not work on Windows. There is no intent to dupe anyone, unfortunately sometimes Windows users do not read the stated system requirements. Please understand that many software companies have no refund policies unless the product doesn’t work as described, because software is not a physical product that can be returned. I regret the confusion it sometimes causes.
Anonymous said on September 12, 2009

manual method worked great, but lost all playlists (they are all blank) and trying to see if any way to recover. help
tyler said on September 21, 2009

don’t listen to any of these just do this:

1) HOLD SHIFT- and press file
2) Magically a new option comes up labeled, ’show exact duplicates’
3) voila delete all the unwanted ones, such as unrated ones, in a massive group.
T3 said on October 24, 2009

Simply amazing job. You probably just saved me two – three hours. I would’ve been deleting each duplicate if it wasn’t for your simple manual way of fixing it. Thanks a million.
Name said on November 21, 2009

iDupe shareware will take care of it easily. i had 3000 duplicates, no way was i going to go through manually.
B said on November 24, 2009

I agree. It shouldn’t matter who own’s it. The problems needs to be fixed. I have researched this issue and how to resolve for myself and all i get it the same question with the same answer that no one is at fault and still not the appropriate way to fix the initial problem of why itunes/Quicktime has a problem of getting duplicate file destinations on there. We understand if we have duplicate songs due to different albums but what is the reason that the same song from the same album arrive into our library. There has got to be a way that as the songs are uploaded, the program recognizes duplicates and will ask if we really want to. I notice it does this when there already are games on there. It asks if we want to replace that. Is there some basic resolution on settings that may be causing this problem that the average joe’s(joe-ets for the ladies) is not aware of?
Anonymous said on December 10, 2009

I get the removal of duplicate files but when they are of different extension types, which extension type should I keep so that ITunes doesn’t make copies again so it can recognize them. I have several different types such as MP3, M4p, windows media audio file, etc.. In other words, what is the best file extension type for ITunes to read?
Bryan said on December 11, 2009

Thank you SO much! this just blew my mind
Anonymous said on December 16, 2009

This is a very inefficient solution but a solution nonetheless. I’d like to find or write an iTunes plugin that does nothing but auto-select even (or odd) items in the list.
Then the steps would be:
Show Duplicates
Run Plugin to Auto Select Every Other Track
Delete the selected tracks
Anonymous said on December 26, 2009

not quite.

Quicktime has been an Apple product for almost 20 years now, but iTunes was originally SoundJam MP, a program apple purchased in 2000 and modified into iTunes.
Tor I. said on December 31, 2009

Another reason for duplicates can be if you have upgraded songs to iTunes+ and chose to keep the old files. Then “Find duplicates” will list both, and you can look in info (Command+I) to see which is the crappy protected 128 kbps version and which is the unprotected 256 kbps version you want to keep.
Anonymous said on January 9, 2010

The first of many many answers to doubles which made some sense and of practical use. Many thanks AVisioli MD
avisioli@ntlworld.com
Si said on January 15, 2010

The tedious method listed above (copy out, copy in) doesn’t work in iTunes 9 on Windows. It exports duplicates as trackName.mp3 and TrackName1.mp3
vinchete said on January 22, 2010

Anyone try Automator yet?

Because iTunes automatically adds a “1″ or “2″ to the end of a duplicate file name, you can use Automator to move those files from your iTunes library to another folder. After the files are physically gone from your iTunes music folder, you can use any number of means to remove the dead/broken links from your iTunes library.

Step #1 – Open Automator, and first use “Find Finder Items” in your iTunes Music Folder to find file’s whose names end with ” 1.mp3″, ” 1.m4p”, ” 1.m4a”, or ” 1.wav”, etc. I thought it important to use ‘ends with’ and the file extension, rather than ‘contains’ and ” 1.” to prevent accidents, but either would work I suppose. I also added the space before the number one for the same reason.

Step #2 – “Move Finder Items” to a new folder that you created, let’s call it “Temp Trash”. Automator has a “Move Finder Items to Trash” function, but my music files are stored on a server and they’d be deleted immediately. I wanted to put them in a temporary folder so I could look through them one time before I deleted them permanently.

Repeat for ” 2.mp3″, etc., even ” 3.mp3″ if you have to.

FYI: Automater won’t replace existing file names unless you check that box, so even if you find 1,234 songs in your search, it might not delete all 1,234 if some have the exact same file name (but are stored in different folders, for example). Check that the number of files found in Step #1 match those moved in Step #2. You can check the box to overwrite file names, or create another folder and run the Automator task again for the duplicate duplicates.

WARNING: I found that songs ending in “…Part 1.mp3″ would get snagged in this function, so after I was done I opened my temporary trash folder in a finder window and searched for songs containing the word “part”…saved 8 songs/shows that I otherwise would’ve removed accidentally.

After I felt I was done, I chose to remove all the songs from my iTunes library (but NOT the files!), and then re-import my iTunes Music folder (it’ll take all night).

I started with 10,760 files + duplicates, and moved a little more than half of that to my temp folder (including files ending in “2″ and “3″, and duplicate track names hiding in different folders). This method should have gotten most, but tomorrow morning I’ll “show exact duplicates” and manually remove whatever is left.

Cheers,
V
Anonymous said on February 7, 2010

GREAT idea Luke. Simple and fast. This should be stickied at the top. thanks all for helping me with my dup issue.
Anonymous said on February 10, 2010

how about 293gigs in a 587 gig library? Im so frustrated and overwhlmed!
Anonymous said on February 10, 2010

but how do you delete in a massive group?
Anonymous said on February 12, 2010

I wish that I had known that the iDupe product only ran on a Mac. I just finished buying it for nothing. I saw no “Mac Only” data until the “purchase complete” screen.
Anonymous said on February 15, 2010

how can you highlight a group of songs and delete them rather than having to delete them one by one?
Anonymous said on February 16, 2010

You need 3rd party software.
Anonymous said on February 21, 2010

I tried mdeldupfile from mdecks.com. No apps needed. It is a simple bat file (or sh on mac) you get by submitting your exported duplicates as a text file.

Works great. Nothing to it.
Anonymous said on February 21, 2010

Thanks
Terramadre said on February 26, 2010

Only way I know to move over playlists…make a “playlists” folder on your Ext. HD, go to EACH playlist you want to keep (I know…each and every one..) and control/click– select “Export”. A window will open showing default info consisting of the playlist name (followed by .txt) and a place to choose location. Just choose the playlist folder on you Ext. HD. THEN…go to your iTunes and hit File>Library>Import Playlist. Far as I know, you have to do this for EACH Playlist!
Anonymous said on April 9, 2010

Great just what i needed i hate duplicates
JSJSJS said on April 12, 2010

1.COPY ALL ITUNES FILES INTO A FOLDER ON MY COMPUTER, when it one file and its duplicate click “yes to all” (basically just deleting every duplicate for you)
2. DELETE ALL SONGS ON ITUES (trust me on this one)
3. Paste all the songs back on itunes, and 400 less dupes on yo pc.
Timesnewromance said on June 28, 2010

this doesn’t work for me? what am i doing wrong?
Mitch said on June 30, 2010

On iTunes 9.2 and OS X use the OPTION button instead of SHIFT.

Also, its still not perfect… can’t tell the difference between same song on different albums, different lengths, etc… Still much easier that scrubbing back and forth LOOKING for things that might be dupes…
Just Pugh said on July 17, 2010

Do not click show duplicates, then sift then file as this way does’t work! DO hit show all then press shift then whilst holding down shift click File, hey presto there it is “show exact dupes”, Cheers from South Wales
Ryankwanten000 said on July 19, 2010

I bloody hate iTunes its crap, I have duplicated folders, the problem is I have say Thirty Seconds To Mars folder on my PC containing all the trakcs edited correctly under advance properties to ensure all have same propertys and only thing differant is the track name and file size, if I then import this folder into iTunes and Sync with my iPod I end up with 2 folders both called Thirty Seconds To Mars one has 11 tracks in it the other has just one, what the hell is going on here ??????????? this is repeated though several albums and is driving me to the point I threw the darn thing acros the room crazy, AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
Nick5454 said on August 13, 2010

click get info and find out which property is mispelled. it does a character check so even a blank will cause it to be different.
Lanorra Fedora said on August 27, 2010

I found a good way to doo it so ya don’t have to click on by one on yer duplicates.

Use the iTunes command “File->Show Duplicates” then right click on the sorter bar and add the “Date Added” field.

Then you can sort by Date Added, all the new ones will be at the top, and it may make it easy for you to select all the ones you want to delete.
Cmcstretford said on August 29, 2010

i have over 7000. but there not duplicates… there like there like 15x the same song :S
i am NOT deleting them manually :/.
Yuna Rapoport said on September 6, 2010

Does anybody know how to make it so that “delete” is an option when I try to delete instead of just “remove from library?” I know delete used to be on there, and now I can’t find it anywhere to put back on. Thanks!
Runby61 said on September 17, 2010

It is actually alt/option and File on a Mac, but it actually shows exact file names, but for some reason it doesn’t distinguish bit rate. Weird!
Cameron_pascoe001 said on September 17, 2010

I have a tonne of itunes files that i copied from and old ipod before it died onto my hard drive. THey are of course all in the form FTWW and THIW. I am wondering if there is a program out there that can help me convert them so I can see the tracks names etc for easier recognition and so I can manage my music folders
Vvnp159 said on September 24, 2010

On my ipod, there is a duplicate album under a different artist name. The duplicate is not seen on my itunes library, only my ipod. How can i delete the duplicate?
Bustergob said on October 2, 2010

This was amazing and simple thanks 221!
Cmonster said on October 5, 2010

…a-heh…heh heh heh…Ha Ha…..BWA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!!!!
Just Pugh, good fellow human, for some reason your description of the process made sense and, BY GOD!, IT WORKED!!!!

I originally had over 2500 duplicates. Real ones. Many were different versions of the same songs, but some were the diabolical ones thanks to iTunes, I guess. I had been going through my library after hitting “Show Duplicates” and having to listen to a few bars of every song I was uncertain of…which was a lot. After searching through software reviews and reading an insane amount of comment sections in several places I wound up here and had seen this solution given more than once. The real duplicate amount dropped to 648 from over 10,000. I can go through that, for safety’s sake, on my head. *whew!*

Thanks to all of you that suggested the solution and thanks especially to you, Just Pugh, for presenting it in verbiage that made sense to my ragged brain.

Thanks and Best Wishes! I hope the weather in South Wales is treating y’all well!
-Cmonster
Cmonster said on October 5, 2010

…argh…mistyped information. I had over 10,000 music files and and at least 2500 were duplicates. The duplicates are now down to 648. My bad.

Cmonster
Kavanabp said on October 5, 2010

yes nigga thats what im talkin about!
Caesius said on October 17, 2010

Delete the duplicate line in iTunes, just as you’ve noted. Then go immedately to the Recycle Bin and Restore that song. The remaining iTunes listing (the one you didn’t delete) will now be the only one pointing to the Restored file.

This is exactly the problem I am having. And while what I’ve written IS a fix, it is not one I want to use on 900+ files. I do believe the other fixes noted above (placing songs copied from iTunes Library to a new folder, then delete iTunes Library, and throw the copies back into iTunes ) might work for this… But since this is a wonky issue to begin with, I think it’ll tie up my laptop all day to copy/paste 5000 songs back into iTunes. And I really don’t want to point iTunes to a folder of my own creation as the new path for all song files. I like the ease and functionality of the “Automatically Add To iTunes” feature, so the less I screw with it, the better.
Ash121981 said on October 23, 2010

This manual solution worked GREAT!!!! first and best answerI found!
Ladidadi said on November 1, 2010

This does not work on my iTunes v10? Ive tryed using tyhe shift, control, option and command buttons but none change the file menu??
Nevindawson said on November 2, 2010

Note that you need to hold the Shift or Command key BEFORE clicking the file menu.
Kyle said on November 8, 2010

Yes there is..
1. Open “my computer”
2. Go to folder options and select “show hidden Files”
3. Now open your ipod like its a drive..(which it is)
4. Open the faded folder that says ipod control
5. then open the folder that says ipod/itunes music
6. now highlight the folders only (all of them) i.e. F00, F01, F02…. and so on
7. Right click and click properties.
8. uncheck hide and click ok then on the window that pops up clik ok again.
9. once the files are unhidden, just drag the highlighted folders over ur itunes library and itunes will automatically put the songs in and give them all the correct info about the song name, artist, etc.

ENJOY : ]
Mikael Blomfelt said on November 28, 2010

The problem that I have is that no automated script that deletes every second file in the “Show (Exact) Duplicates” view is going to help when I sometimes have the same song more than twice. Why exactly does the Show Duplicates view also show the original? Why can’t there be an option so that it only shows the duplicates, filtered by a parameter of your choice (i.e. keep the one with the highest bitrate, etc.)?

Somebody mentioned TidySongs somewhere, but I’m reluctant to let some random piece of Freeware delete 20GB of music from my library.
you'reabigfatphony said on December 10, 2010

So what – it’s probably the easiest solution to a terribly frustrating issue – F’ tha’ Date added content.
Orbitmars said on December 12, 2010

I would quickly do the manual fix of dupes (copy all from iTunes library to HD then copy/import back to iTunes, EXCEPT that it will destroy all the info in my many playlists.

Is there any way to maintain integrity of playlists while deleting the dupes (other than manually selecting each dupe and having either script or iTunes delete it?)

thanks!
idiot said on December 17, 2010

Oh my freaking god. How is it that simple?!
N0nuf2 said on December 20, 2010

Ok, this only works if you don’t have names like:

Song1.m4a
01 Song2.m4a

LOL…

Looks like it’s time for a second move and then a file renamer app. :-)

Good Tip by the way.

/sg
Rhett said on December 20, 2010

Boy was this easy and I did not have to buy any new application. Thank you!!
Scap said on December 27, 2010

Didn’t work on my computer
Bryan Duke said on December 28, 2010

Wow…overcomplicated solutions here. Select show exact duplicates as discussed then uncheck every double….very quickly done, even with a lot.
After that, just arrange order by checks, then just select all unchecked for a bulk delete. Logic
gayboy1 said on December 28, 2010

i havent been able to get one of these scripts to work yet

ipod sux
Cynnes Gwyn said on January 5, 2011

Problem is, iTunes leaves some dupes unchecked, but not all. Looks like it is trying to decide which is the original. Then it is a little unnerving to decide whether to delete or leave on disc. Like so many others, I wish iTunes didn’t take so much space duplicating everything.
Tezm said on January 14, 2011

my duplicate songs are in win media player..i did try itunes so it colud be connected,but its not from itunes i want them of.any ideas?
guest said on February 27, 2011

QuickTime was developed by Apple in 1991 and has always been owned by Apple. iTunes was developed by Apple in 2001. Neither have been separate entities (although early iTunes was based on SoundJam).
Grmarlow said on April 3, 2011

It would be a simple solution on Apple’s end to have iTunes run a hash analysis on the files to determine whether or not a file is unique . It’s either a duplicate or it’s not – why rely on file names? Generating hash values to determine duplicates is neither time consuming nor costly in terms of computer resources. .
Ronzoweaver said on April 20, 2011

Sam is the man no doubt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wide Angle Software said on June 7, 2011

Using iTunes’ own “show duplicates” option is extremely time consuming if you have a lot of duplicate tracks. Tune Sweeper is a good program to check out if you wish to take the pain out of finding and deleting duplicate and missing songs from your iTunes library.
Kellyvoet said on June 14, 2011

Best solution so far – thanks!
John Anthony Robertson said on June 24, 2011

Hehe ive got about 22000 dupes! try doing that manually! eekk!
djsurreal said on August 4, 2011

i tried this and clicked show duplicates then show all then shift file and clicked show exact duplicate and it came up with all the duplicates(both copies) so do i have to manually go through all 5000 and delete the duplicate?
Dadda said on October 20, 2011

What about a Boolean setting in iTunes preferences like rules in Mail: import ‘if’ AAC ‘and/or/not’ MP3 ‘and/or/not’ etc.
There you go Apple, a free feature for the next iteration.
I’ve tried a few dupe finders, currently using iDupe. It’s not very good with Track 1, Track 2, etc, deletetes the multiples even thought they are by different artists and vastly different sizes.
dan said on December 2, 2011

unfortunatly i have 37 000 music files on itunes 22 000 of which are duplicates

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How to Remove duplicate files from your iTunes media library

Are you tired of starting up your iPod and starting your playlist to find the same song playing over and over caused by duplicate files in your Itunes library or in windows media player? Here are a few tips to help.

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