Displaying Duplicates
The first way to clean duplicates out of your library is to have iTunes show you what duplicates actually exist in your library. To do this, open up iTunes and make sure you’re in your library screen. Then simply click File, and then Display Duplicates. This will change your library window into a duplicates window, showing you every music file you’ve got loaded into iTunes of which there is another with the same name.
You can now look through and find what you want to keep, or delete, and do so. This method is great for smaller libraries, or if you’re just trying to see how many duplicate files, and associated wasted space (as you can see displayed at the bottom of the screen) your library has. Where this becomes difficult though, are instances where repeats are okay, for instance, an actual studio album versus a live record. The songs in common between these CD’s may have the same name, but are very different songs. What do we do? Just keep reading to find out!
Displaying Exact Duplicates
If you have remixes or live tracks that share song names with albums, this is the method for you. Just like in the last method, we’re looking to the File menu for help. This time though, after click file, hold the Alt, or Option key, and you’ll notice that where it used to say Display Duplicates, it will now read Display Exact Duplicates. Clicking this will display, rather than songs whose names match, songs who are literally exact matches. This avoids seeing those same-title, different-track duplicates in your list, and can drastically change your results. Compare mine below to those above to see what I mean.
Which should I try?
Well, the differences are clear. You’re going to get way more results with the former, more broad search, and much more specific results with the latter. Which you want to use depends mostly on what your goal is. Is your hard drive full, and you’re looking to get rid of, or just move, a bunch of music that you only listen to occasionally, lie those live albums? Or, like many, have you copied and moved and recopied your library a bunch of times, with the best of intentions, but mixed results, and you need to clean up copies of files that shouldn’t be there? In that case, you’ll need the latter, more specific duplicate search. What other ways have you found to keep your library clean? Do you use a third party utility, or just let iTunes handle it all? Let us know in the comments!
