Forum Discussion
Built an Android app for OneDrive duplicate detection (something I wish Microsoft offered natively)
After years of dealing with duplicate photos and videos in OneDrive, I built a solution and wanted to share it with the community.
**The problem:**
- Samsung Gallery sync creates duplicates in both "Camera Roll" and "Samsung Gallery" folders
- WhatsApp media gets backed up twice (original + shared copy)
- App resets/reinstalls trigger re-uploads with "(1)" suffixes
- No native duplicate detection in OneDrive
**What I built:**
OneDrive MediaOps - an Android app that scans for duplicates directly in the cloud. No need to download files to a desktop first.
Key features:
- Cloud-based scanning (no downloads required)
- Algorithm visually identical photos even with different filenames
- Preview before deleting
- Batch deletion
**Why cloud-based matters:**
With 50GB+ of photos, downloading everything to run a desktop duplicate finder wasn't practical. This scans media directly via the Graph API.
Available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onedrive.mediaops&pcampaignid=web_share
Would love feedback from the community - especially if you've been dealing with the Samsung/OneDrive sync duplicate issue.
2 Replies
Nice problem choice—this is a very real pain point for OneDrive + Android users, especially Samsung owners. A few thoughts, split into questions to strengthen adoption.
Questions…
You don’t need to answer all of these here, but they’re worth addressing in your Play Store listing or FAQ:
1. Privacy & permissions
- Is anything sent to your servers?
2. Rate limits / large libraries
- How does it behave with 100k+ photos?
- Does Graph API throttling slow scans significantly?
3. False positives
- Can users adjust sensitivity?
4. Video duplicates
- Any limits on video duration/size?
5. OneDrive account types
- Personal vs Business accounts?
- Multiple accounts supported?
- Nice work 🙂— this is exactly the kind of “why doesn’t the platform do this?” app that gains loyal users.
Thanks for the thoughtful questions — really appreciate this. Let me go through them:
Privacy & permissions
Nothing goes to my servers — because there are no servers. All processing happens locally on your device. The app only accesses OneDrive file metadata (names, sizes, dates, thumbnails) via the Microsoft Graph API using standard OAuth 2.0 authentication. The only permissions requested are User.Read and Files.ReadWrite. No location, no contacts, no device storage access. Full privacy policy is linked in the Play Store listing.
Rate limits / large libraries
The app is built with Graph API throttling in mind. It includes adaptive rate limiting with automatic backoff and retry logic, so if Microsoft starts pushing back, the app slows down gracefully rather than failing. For very large libraries (100k+), scanning will obviously take longer, but it's designed to handle it — paginated fetching, background processing via foreground service (so it survives app backgrounding), and progress tracking throughout. I've tested with libraries in the tens of thousands range without issues.
False positives
Yes — there's a sensitivity slider you can adjust before each scan. Photos and videos have separate thresholds. The defaults are tuned to be conservative (high confidence matches), but you can lower the threshold if you want to catch more near-duplicates at the risk of more false positives. You always preview results before any deletion happens.
Video duplicates
Videos are supported with a multi-criteria matching approach — it's not just comparing a single property. There's no hard limit on video duration or file size since the app works with cloud-hosted metadata and thumbnails rather than downloading full video files.
OneDrive account types
Both personal Microsoft accounts and organizational (work/school) accounts are supported — the authentication is configured for both. Currently single-account mode, so you'd need to sign out and back in to switch. Multi-account support is on the roadmap.
Thanks again for the kind words. The "why doesn't the platform do this?" frustration is exactly what motivated the project. Feedback from users with large, messy libraries is especially valuable, so don't hesitate to reach out if you run into edge cases.
