I want to remove all duplicates from my library, to consider a duplicate the song must have the same encoding, bits, duration.
4 Answers
You can use the default iTunes engine to find duplicates :
File > Display Duplicates
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I remember some one later asked the same question but can't find it, also you trick don't work fine fore me iTunes Display Duplicate worked buggy for me.– Am1rr3zASep 15, 2010 at 12:40
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I was also sure someone already posted this question, but I, too, cannot find it anymore. At least, I'm not crazy ! I know the built-in functionality is a buggy, that's why I added links to 3rd-party softwares.– StuderSep 15, 2010 at 13:40
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1I was aware of this option, but wanted an automatic way to remove the duplicates– AragornSep 16, 2010 at 2:39
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This approach (at least as of 10.5.1) will not do what the questions asks: songs do not need to have the "same encoding" to be recognized as duplicates.– oromeNov 15, 2011 at 18:41
"Show duplicates" been removed from iTunes 11. As we are left with having to use 3rd party apps to remove duplicates now, Tune Sweeper is the one I use.
If you enable iTunes Match, duplicates will now be marked with an icon:
Note however that such files do not need to have the "same encoding" to be recognized as duplicates. Also note that (inconveniently) the file marked by Match as a duplicate (and thus "skipped") may not have the "best" encoding of the duplicated files. For example, you might see this:
In this case, in order to end up with a single song, managed by Match, with the high bit-rate song on your machine, you will need to delete both songs, leaving just the one managed by Match (the first one above)
and then download the "Purchased" song from iCloud
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This combined with the existing
Display Exact Duplicates
should help anyone use the existing tools to thin out duplicates that are exact matches.– bmike ♦Nov 15, 2011 at 19:06
Here are two more options: Free - DupeGuru Shareware - iDupe
I haven't tried DupeGuru yet, but iDupe worked quite well for me, though I had to batch up my checkin. First I'd select iTune's buggy "display dupes" and then I'd use that selection to run iDupe on. This sped things up quite a bit. I'm interested to see whether DupeGuru improves things by checking audio finger prints.