Forum Discussion
Removing Duplicate Photos in the Gallery
Last night, I was using my PC to manage photos on my phone, attempting to delete them via the computer. Accidentally, I ended up deleting all the photos on my phone by selecting all with Ctrl+A. I considered recovering them with Google, but since I could already see the photos on my phone, I decided against it. Instead, I transferred new photos to an SD card for easier organization before copying them to my PC.
During this process, I noticed a folder named "Gallery" in the file explorer, which contained numerous duplicate photos. I am looking to locate this "Gallery" folder to delete it and get rid of the duplicates, keeping only the original ones. I suspect that Windows 11 is sourcing these duplicates from the pictures section.
When I access another PC, I observe a few duplicated photos within the initial photos displayed. It should be manageable to remove these duplicates on that PC. However, on the current PC, there is an overwhelming amount of duplicate photos. My plan is to delete the "Gallery" folder, recreate it, and hopefully retain only the original photos. If this doesn't work, I will consider formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows 10.
2 Replies
If you're tackling a large number of duplicate photos, using an online tool could save you some hassle. I recently encountered a similar issue on my dad's laptop, and found that using an online service like https://dupfind.com/ can really help. It works directly from your browser, so you don't need to upload photos or install anything. You can quickly sort through duplicates and decide which ones to keep, which might be less risky than deleting entire folders. Hopefully, this helps streamline your photo management without needing to reformat your drive.
To maximize chances of recovery, avoid adding new files or taking new photos, as this can overwrite the deleted data.
