How to find and delete duplicate songs in your iTunes library

By Allyson Kazmucha
last updated

If you've got a hefty iTunes library that's been transferred over from Mac to Mac or PC to PC, odds are you've run into issues with duplicate songs. It happens from time to time and as your library grows, so do the problems that come with it. For the most part, ridding your library of duplicate tracks is a pretty painless process.

Here's how:

How to show all song duplicates in iTunes

  1. Launch iTunes on either your Mac or PC.
  2. In the top navigation, click on View.
  3. Now select Show Duplicate Items.
  4. iTunes will now display anything in your library it thinks are duplicate tracks.

  1. By holding down Command and clicking on titles (control for PC users), you can select the ones you'd like to remove and simply drag them to the trash.

It's important to note that sometimes iTunes can confuse different mixes and slight variations that come on different albums. So make sure what you're deleting is actually a duplicate and not a remix or version from a different album. That's why we recommend using the exact duplicate option explained in the steps below.

How to show only exact song duplicates in iTunes

  1. Launch iTunes on either your Mac or PC.
  2. Hold down the Alt - Option key on your Mac (Shift key for Windows users) and now click on View in the top navigation.
  3. While still holding down the Alt - Option or Shift key, you'll now notice that the duplicates option has now become Show Exact Duplicate Items. Click on it while still holding down.

  1. iTunes will now display only exact matches. Here you can weed through tracks easier than you can showing all duplicates.

Other options

If you're still having issues or have a massive library that requires a more powerful and less time consuming option, apps like TuneUp can not only automatically clean up duplicate tracks, but also replace missing cover art and fix album titles. If you're looking for something more slimmed down with a lighter price tag, Song deDuper is a cheaper option and available in the Mac App Store. Song deDuper allows you to narrow using several criteria and can clean out your library without the need for you to manually delete duplicates. It's not as powerful as suites like TuneUp but it does what it says it will, and does it well.

If you've used other software to remove duplicate tracks from your library, let us know what you used and how well it worked in the comments. Especially you Windows users out there!

Allyson Kazmucha
Allyson Kazmucha

iMore senior editor from 2011 to 2015.

19 Comments
  • What if you have a massive library but you use Windows 8? Is there a good program for cleaning up dupes there?
  • Song Sergeant has long been a fave on OS X, it now runs on Windows too. It automatically keeps the best metadata amongst your duplicates and preserves playlists too.
  • Is there a similar option for Windows based iTunes? Show Duplicates gets me over 1,300 items - exact duplicates would solve a lot of problems. Or alternatively, a Windows version of Song deDuper
  • I don't know a Windows one off the top of my head but i can tell you i use windows and have a large library. I had to do this maybe 6 or 7 years ago and there are programs. I used one. I simply forget it and i was running xp/vista then. My suggestion is google something like "remove duplicates from itunes" or something along that lines and just go from there and see what you get. I think i had to test two or three apps before i found one i could use. I'm sure now there are much better options. In fact that ideduper below looks decent. Be careful though, find one that's got good searching variables. Because if you're like me and have multiple versions of songs you surely don't want a weak software that only searches the artist name and song name. I always paid attention to song length to tell if it was really a duplicate. Also be careful not to break up full albums if you don't actually intend to. good luck.
  • can't vouch for any of these as i said i did this a long ago but this looks like a possibility http://www.similarityapp.com/
  • Thanks bud - appreciate the help!
  • The only options I could find for Windows that looked legit was this: http://download.cnet.com/iDeduper/3000-18551_4-10967612.html I just didn't list it because I couldn't verify how well it works since I'm Mac based.
  • Thanks Allyson.
  • Frickin' Awesome! I have an increasing number of tracks in my library and pretty much every song has its proper album art, and IDE tags... yet I have the occasional duplicates. Somehow I never noticed these options in iTunes before and ended up relying on coming across duplicates when playing on my iPod or iPhone or manually hunt them down within Windows Explorer. This'll help tremendously in straightening out my playlist and I'm completely OCD about keeping my library organized and all tracks updated with the proper information and no duplicates, etc. Thanks!
  • TuneUp is $49.99, not $4.99 as listed in the article.
  • But but if you have 4,725 songs showing as duplicates since re-importing your files, it's not very practical. I have ever come accross such issue. Finally my boyfriend help me remove these duplicate songs with one click by using itunes clean up tool. It seems to called Tenorshare Music Cleanup.
  • you need a cleaner apps for your problem. you can use Duplicate Files Deleter for fast and easy.
  • please try "Duplicate Files Deleter program" to remove duplicate files. thanks
  • I use Duplicate Files Deleter as it is very effective. It is 100% accurate and performs the scan quickly.
  • You shouldn't have to pay just to remove massive duplicates, like because Apple does things i little different in iTunes only I'm learning Applescript because i'm cheezed of with all the scripts out there for Mac. which do not copy exact tags from one to the other.... and other simple stuff to make like easier but not at the cost of price... Least this way, i can do whatever i want on my own and share it free of charge....
  • You shouldn't have to pay just to remove massive duplicates, like because Apple does things i little different I'm learning Applescript because i'm cheezed of with all the scripts out there for Mac. which do not copy exact tags from one to the other.... and other simple stuff to make like easier but not at the cost of price... Least this way, i can do whatever i want on my own and share it free of charge.... While Doug's Scripts are useful, they leave allot to be desired, since you can copy some tags, like Composer, but only to "other" tags of selected tracks.. etc.. u cannot copy Artist to Artist tag... only to Album artist...
  • Using Duplicate Files Deleter is a good idea. the program is fast and easy
  • Try Duplicate Files Deleter to delete duplicate songs , it is very effective.
  • The article is actually is best for me.