Filed under: iTunes, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Removing duplicate songs from iTunes
Have you ever been listening your iTunes library and wondered why a song played more than one time? Duplicate songs in your library can be very annoying, and waste precious space on your hard drive. In this TUAW Tip, I'm going to show you how to get rid of duplicates using a built-in feature in iTunes.In iTunes, click the "Music" category under the Library section from the selector on the left. You should now see all of the music items that are in your iTunes library. Now click File > Show Duplicates. Any duplicate songs that are in your library will show up, and you will be able to delete the ones that you don't want any longer. To hide the duplicate song list, click the "Show All" button at the bottom of the window (or click File > Show All). You can use this same method for Music, Videos, and TV Shows. It will also work in any playlist.
Using the built-in iTunes feature is nice, but it can be very time consuming -- especially if you have thousands of songs, videos, or TV shows. In this case, you can use an application like iDupe (which costs $8US). iDupe gives you a ton of options for deleting duplicate songs in iTunes.
Do you know another way to delete duplicate iTunes songs? Know of another application to delete duplicates? Tell us in the comments!
Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and TUAW Tips sections!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Felix H said 1:41PM on 12-15-2008
I used an Apple script to remove duplicates in iTunes. It is free and far superior than iDupe.
http://www.opensourceconnections.com/2006/11/11/better-itunes-song-deduping/
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Mike said 1:48PM on 12-15-2008
Keep in mind that iTunes will find the duplicates based on song titles. So while some songs may have the same title they may not be the same song. You could have a live version and a studio version with the same name and those would be picked as duplicates. Also there is the greatest hits version and the studio version. While technically the same song they are from different albums. Also you could have the same song but with a different bit rate and those both would be seen as the same song.
So don't automatically delete any song marked as a duplicate without examining it first.
I wish there was a way to mass delete songs files that are no longer there. Like if I delete the file itself and then in iTunes they have the song listed with the exclamation point next to it. There is no easy way to do it. And with a massive song library I don't have the time to scroll through over 20,000 songs. Now if iTunes had an option to monitor certain folders and update the library automatically that would be amazing.
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Chris said 1:52PM on 12-15-2008
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=removedeadsuper
Mike said 2:02PM on 12-15-2008
Yeah that would work for a Mac but as of right now I am still on a Windows based PC. Boo me I know.
Any Windows based solutions?
Andy Gardner said 11:27AM on 1-25-2009
Yes there is - this used to be one of my big bug-bears but I found an easy work-around. To find all files that have lost the track on the disc, Select all your music and right click to select Get Info. Then pick an attribute that you don't normally bother with. In my case I never bother with the BPM so I update every track to some value like 1. When all the tracks have been updated go to the top line and select by BPM. All the tracks that have an asterisk will not have been updated and will appear together first, then all the rest will be listed with 1. Select first to last of the tracks with asterisk and hit the delete button. It's probably a good idea to then select the remainder and change the BPM back to nothing ready to do the same in the future at some point.
Corey said 1:57PM on 12-15-2008
I agree with Chris....DougScripts is amazing at this
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Doug Adams said 1:58PM on 12-15-2008
The "Super Remove Dead Tracks" script recommended above will not remove duplicates. My application "Dupin" will:
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php
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Chris said 2:04PM on 12-15-2008
I suggested your "SRDT" AppleScript in response to the second part of Mike's comment regarding the nuisance of exclamation marks next to removed tracks.
You do excellent work, Doug. Thanks!
Doug Adams said 2:12PM on 12-15-2008
"I suggested your "SRDT" AppleScript in response to the second part of Mike's comment regarding the nuisance of exclamation marks next to removed tracks."
I appreciate that, Chris. But that won't stop people who download it from this article's page emailing me wondering why it doesn't delete duplicates ;_)
matthew barnes said 2:23PM on 12-15-2008
so here's the real challenge...
i'll have duplicates come up and i want to delete one of them, however i know that the song is in a playlist or multiple playlists. if i delete the wrong one, then the song has now been deleted from my playlists.
any solutions for this? (besides combing through my playlists to figure out what is where.)
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Michael said 2:47PM on 12-15-2008
I've been looking for that same functionality as well... remove duplicate tracks while maintaining current playlists. No luck so far....
erick said 2:49PM on 12-15-2008
hey guys somebody knows how to do it on the iPhone or iPod??
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Kenny said 3:25PM on 12-15-2008
If you right click a song in iTunes it will show you what playlists that song belongs to.
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Galley said 4:39PM on 12-15-2008
Don't forget that you can option-click to see "exact duplicates".
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Russ said 6:30PM on 12-15-2008
Really? Where do you option-click from?
What fields does that compare?
Galley said 11:29PM on 12-15-2008
Press the Option key before you select the File menu. That will change the menu entry to "Show Exact Duplicates". Show duplicates only displays tracks with identical titles, but selecting "exact" will only display tracks where ALL fields are identical.
monnayage said 11:02AM on 12-16-2008
Wow, I'm surprised that worked because the menu doesn't change when you hold down option like other things do. Thanks!
Norm said 5:36PM on 12-15-2008
I use dupeGuru ME (the ME is for Music Edition) by Hardcoded Software (www.hardcoded.net). It's available for both Mac and PC and can search for duplicates based on filename, tags, or even file contents! Lots of settings to get things just right and definitely makes it easy to tame a large, unorganized music collection.
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lolgamoff said 8:28PM on 12-15-2008
I actually want to keep my duplicates. :(
Only because I rip in lossless. I convert to 256 kbps AAC for my iphone.
Does anyone know of a good utility to manage these? perhaps to hide the 256kbps songs in itunes? it's a bitch to have two of a bunch of songs.
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caricaturesbydave said 11:03PM on 12-15-2008
http://www.hyperbolicsoftware.com/TidyUp.html
This is best of breed - ain't nothin' that comes close to what it does.
It's waaaaaaaaaay powerful and massively configureable.
Super cool for songs and images.
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