How to Fix iOS 16 Duplicate Photos Not Showing Up Issue

iOS 16 brings two features to Photos. The Photo Cutout lets you cut the subject of a photo and copy it somewhere else. Duplicate Detection can help you find and delete duplicate photos on iPhone. Photo Cutout is very easy to use, but you may not know much about Duplicate Detection.

The Duplicate Detection will aggregate all of your duplicate photos and help you merge duplicates into one photo with the highest quality. The discarded duplicates will be moved to the Recently Deleted album in case you want to recover any shots.

Here are the steps to find and delete duplicate photos in iOS 16/17/18

Step 1. Go to the Photos app and tap Albums at the bottom.

Step 2. Scroll down to find the Utilities section and tap Duplicates.

Step 3. You will see all duplicate photos. Now you can tap Merge to delete duplicate photos.

If you want to merge multiple duplicate photos at once, you can tap Select in the top right corner to Select All or choose multiple duplicates to merge.

Instead of taking just one shot, we usually try multiple times to get the perfect composition or the right light. This can make our photo library pile up with a lot of shots. Now in iOS 16/17/18, you can easily find, merge, and delete duplicate photos to free up storage space.

Problem: iOS 18/17/16 duplicate photos not showing

Typically, when upgrading to iOS 17, the Duplicates folder appears between Imports and Hidden folders. However, some users have reported that they don’t see the Duplicates album or any duplicate photos. Well, it is not a new issue, iOS 17 beta testers have reported this iOS 17/16 duplicate photos not showing issue last month.

Is it a bug? At the time of writing, Apple has not said anything about this iOS 18 duplicate photos not working issue. Some users said they didn't see Duplicates when they just upgraded to iOS 17, but Duplicates appeared two days later - without doing anything. It seems that the iPhone needs some time to sort out the duplicates.

How to fix iOS 18 duplicate photos not showing problem

Here are some ways that can help you fix iOS 18 duplicate photos not working problem. You can try them one after another until the problem is solved.

Tip 1. Create duplicates to text

If no identical photos are detected in the Photos app, then the "Duplicates" album will not be displayed. That may be the reason why you find iOS 18 duplicate photos not showing up. In addition, when you have merged all the duplicates, then the Duplicates folder will disappear.

You can duplicate photos on iPhone by yourself to see if your iPhone can detect the duplicates.

Steps to duplicate photos on iPhone:

• Go to the Photos app and go to Recents or any other albums.
• Tap Select to select one or more photos.
• Tap the three-dots icon and choose the Duplicate option.

It will take some time for iPhone to detect duplicates. You can check back later and see if you get the Duplicates album.

Tip 2. Check duplicates filter

"Duplicate Detection" can help you identify identical photos and videos. Maybe you have set it to Videos but there are no duplicate clips. In this case, it will not show duplicate photos so you meet the iOS 17 duplicate photos not showing problem.

You can go to Duplicates album > Tap the three-dots icon > Choose Filter to see if the settings are correct.

Tip 3. Wait for more time

After updating to iOS 18, your iPhone will go through the photo library to find all duplicates. You will not see the Duplicates folder until the iPhone finds the duplicate photos or videos. If you have a large photo library, it may take longer to complete the task.

If you are sure that you have duplicate photos and the settings are correct, then you can wait a day or two and check if the iOS 18 duplicate photos not showing issue has been solved.

Learn another easy way to find duplicate photos on iPhone and PC

iOS 18 "Duplicate Detection" feature makes it easy to detect duplicate photos on iPhone. However, you may meet iOS 18 duplicate photos not working problem. In this case, you can use another Photo Deduplicate Tool to help you find and delete duplicates.

If you want to delete duplicate photos not only on iPhone but also on computer, then FoneTool, one professional iOS data management tool for Windows is the best choice. Its Photo Deduplication tool can quickly find duplicate photos on iPhone.

✓ It will perform a complete scan to find all duplicate/similar photos based on photo contrast technique.
✓ It will list all original images with all duplicates, then you can select and delete all unwanted photos.
✓ It allows you to backup photos before you delete them from device so that you can recover them quickly.
✓ The Photo Deduplication not only can delete duplicate photos on iPhone but also can find duplicate photos on computer, external hard drive, USB flash drive.

FoneTools supports all iOS/iPadOS versions including iOS 17/iPadOS 17 and any former versions. You can click the download button to get FoneTool and try it by yourself.

Steps to delete duplicate photos on iPhone in iOS 18/17/16/15

Step 1. Launch FoneTool and connect iPhone to computer.

Step 2. Click Toolbox > Choose Photo Deduplication.

Step 3. Click Scan iOS Devices.

Step 4. Set the filer date range as per your needs > Click Start scanning.

Step 5. When the scanning is complete, it will list all duplicate photos.

• You can choose the unwanted photos and click the Delete button to remove them.
• If necessary, you can click the Migrate to button to move unwanted photos to the computer. Those photos will be deleted from the iPhone.

Final words

When iOS 16/17/18 duplicate photos not showing up, you can duplicate photos manually to check if it can detect duplicates on iPhone. iPhone takes time to find duplicates, you can wait a day or two to see if it will appear. If it still doesn't work, you can use FoneTool to detect duplicates or wait for Apple to fix the problem.