OneDrive Creates Duplicates of iPhone Picture Downloads

OneDrive is one of the most widely known and popular cloud storage services out there. It aims to enable users to access their files anywhere and anytime. Although OneDrive is quite a handy tool, there is one issue with it i.e it often creates duplicates of pictures that are uploaded from an iPhone. Eventually, excessive duplicate pictures accumulated in your OneDrive will waste your storage space, and also cause a totally needless clutter.


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How Does This Happen?

A lot of duplicates might be generated during the syn process of your photos. For instance, it is possible that each time your photo gallery is synced, the whole library is re-synced instead of just the changes made since the last sync. Due to this, you might see a good number of duplicates in OneDrive.

Additionally, if you first transfer files from your iPhone to PC and then to your OneDrive, there’s a very high chance that you’ll end up generating a lot of duplicates during the transfer process, especially if you don’t always save files at the same location.

Another reason why there might be duplicate photos on your OneDrive could be that you’re syncing files from multiple devices with different time settings. For instance, if you are syncing the same photos from your iPhone as well as your PC, OneDrive will keep the photos coming in from both the devices.

How to Avoid OneDrive Duplicates?

In order to avoid creating and seeing duplicates, you should ensure that the Linked Duplicates option is turned on.

    • Navigate to the Settings of the Photos app.
  • Turn the Slider to the right to turn on the Linked duplicates option.

Once you do so, all the duplicates will be shown as single files now. This might include copies saved in different folders as well as RAW files. Now when your files are synced to your OneDrive account, the duplicates won’t be uploaded.

If you save your pictures to OneDrive by first transferring them to your PC, make sure you create a designated folder and always use that one. Using a variety of file locations will create duplicates and you’ll end up uploading plenty of them to your OneDrive.

How to Remove Existing OneDrive Duplicate Photos?

While the above mentioned tips can help you avoid generating duplicates in the future, they won’t help you get rid of the duplicate photos that have already piled up in your OneDrive account. In this case, you can opt for an online tool that thoroughly scans your OneDrive, automatically detects all duplicate photos, and helps you remove them. One such tool is Cloud Duplicate Finder. In 4 simple steps, you can get rid of tons of duplicate photos and recover a handsome portion of your storage space. All you have to do is:

    • Select your cloud service (OneDrive in this case).
    • Choose the target folder and launch the scan.
    • After you see the results, select the criteria for retaining files.
  • Now either delete the duplicates or relocate them to a separate folder.

The best part is that the process is fully online and so you do not have to go through the trouble of downloading all the data to your computer before you can scan it. The whole job gets done fast, and in a deadly accurate way.

Have any more tips for avoiding OneDrive duplicates? Feel free to share your knowledge in the comments below!

Raza Ali Kazmi

Raza Ali Kazmi works as an editor and technology content writer at Sorcim Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. He loves to pen down articles on a wide array of technology related topics and has also been diligently testing software solutions on Windows & Mac platforms.