How To Remove Duplicates On iTunes – A Step By Step Guide

Having duplicate songs in iTunes can quickly become quite annoying. However, if you can learn how to remove duplicates on iTunes, you can make life a lot easier by finding the duplicate items and getting rid of them.

iTunes really is a wonderful music manager and, in recent times, it has really become a lot more cleaner, faster and more interesting when it comes to its usage. One problem that persists, however, is that of duplicated files as mentioned above. Duplication may be there in individual files or there may be entire duplicated albums. When such duplicates exist, they aren’t just annoying but they also consume useful space on your device’s storage and searching through songs becomes a lot more complicated causing you to play same song again and again several times. So, let’s take a look at how to remove duplicates on iTunes.

Jump To Section:

• How To Find Duplicates On iTunes And Remove Them
• How To Remove Duplicates On iTunes With Third-Party Program
• How To Prevent Importing Of Duplicate Music In iTunes 12

How To Find Duplicates On iTunes And Remove Them

In new iTunes version, it is a bit harder for users to find the duplicate files. Previously, they could simple get duplicates by clicking the Show Duplicates option in View menu. However, with latest iTunes 12, you have to follow the steps given below for finding duplicate files and getting rid of them.

1. Launch iTunes app
2. Click the File Menu
3. Click on My Library
4. Click on Show Duplicates
5. Now click “All” for viewing duplicate track listing (You can click on ‘Same Album’ for viewing duplicated songs in one particular album)
6. It’s always a great idea that you arrange iTunes music columns in a way that you get to view Name, Artist and the Album By Artist. The columns can be displayed by pressing and holding Control key first and then clicking columns. Make sure that the Artist and Album options are checked because Name will always appear by default in iTunes.
7. Now click Name Column to ensure that duplicate files can be viewed in front of one another.

You will only be able to see duplicated tracks now on iTunes display. The matches are used according to same Artist and Song, however, you get to see several versions of a particular song from various albums. Now if a song has two different versions then you may be looking at the two versions of same song.

You can simply go through tracks one by one and remove any duplicates as soon as you locate them. You can do that simply by highlighting any unwanted files, pressing Delete on keyboard and choosing “Move to Trash” option. Alternately, you can also choose Delete option from Edit menu. In case, if you go for “Keep File” option, you won’t find the file in iTunes but it will still be there on hard drive and will consume precious space.

Once you’ve finished, click on ‘Done’ in top right corner for returning to the regular iTunes view mode. Now, the complete iTunes library will be visible and there won’t be any duplicated tracks.

How To Remove Duplicates On iTunes With Third-Party Program

Though the above method works just fine, you still have an alternate available as well. It is possible that you use a third-party program for removing duplicates on iTunes. And if you want to go this route, here’s what you need to do.

First of all, you will have to find some reliable script for duplication removal. Even though quite a few popular options are available for Mac as well as for Windows, but you’d be better off choosing one of the following.

• DeDuper (For Windows)
• Dupin Lite (For OS X)

Using DeDuper For Removing Duplicates On iTunes

When using DeDuper, you’ll have to load all your duplicate tracks in iTunes window first. For this, click ‘View’ and select ‘Show Duplicate Items’ option. Afterwards, run DeDuper script by double-clicking VBS file you have downloaded. This will remove all duplicate files and leave just one highest quality copy behind, merge together Played and the Skipped counts, and also keep best rating.

All files removed by the script will go in Recycle Bin so that you can restore them if needed. It may take some time for the script to run completely. That’s particularly the case when we have larger libraries at hand. The duplicate of the largest size will not removed so that your highest-quality version remains intact.

Using Dupin Lite For Removing Duplicates On iTunes

When using Dupin Lite on your Mac OS X for removing duplicates on iTunes, follow below steps:

1. First run Dupin Lite and then select desired Library that has to be searched for duplicates from top left corner of the screen.
2. Select criteria which you’d want to use for comparison to help Dupin Lite determine whether or not there are duplicate songs.
3. Click on Filter button for selecting which copy you’d like to keep on your computer. The options available include oldest, highest quality, most played and several others.
4. Click on Get Dupes button and you will get a list of all the duplicate tracks on iTunes. You can keep the tracks that are checked as they’re checked based on the Filter settings that you had specified earlier. The rest of them can simply be purged.

How To Prevent Importing Of Duplicate Music In iTunes 12

The newer iTunes versions do not import any duplicate file if you add them by dragging and dropping them on to iTunes library. Though, you can still force iTunes to add duplicate files simply by pressing and holding Option key as you drag the files to iTunes window. So, you do not need to make any adjustments anymore.

But still, it’s good for you to simply double check iTunes is correctly managing your music. Here is how you can do that.

1. Click iTunes
2. Click Preferences
3. Click Advanced
4. Make sure you have checked the option labeled “Keep iTunes Media folder organized”
5. Make sure that you have checked the option labeled “Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to Library”
6. Click on Reset all dialog warnings
7. Finally, click OK

iTunes should be all set now to keep your iTunes music folder fully organized and won’t take any duplicate music files.

So, these are the options that you can try if you are looking for answers to how to remove duplicates on iTunes. If you are running latest iTunes 12 then you must not be worrying though but if you are on any previous iTunes version then you can use any of the above mentioned methods for removing duplicates. If any issues come along the way, feel free to get in touch through comments section below.

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