Searching for duplicate music tracks in iTunes/Music App

What Tune Sweeper can do with your duplicate tracks...

  1. Search for duplicates in your iTunes/Music App library.
  2. Select which copies to delete.
  3. Delete duplicate songs from your library.

How to find duplicate songs in iTunes/Music App with Tune Sweeper

Follow the steps below to perform a customized search for duplicates of your entire iTunes library:

  1. Download and install Tune Sweeper
  2. Double-click the Tune Sweeper icon to launch the software
  3. On the welcome screen, click "Search For Duplicates"
  4. Customize your search criteria
  5. Click "Search for Duplicates"
Tune Sweeper 4 software landing page

For more details, please read on below, or learn about specific features from the navigation list.

Customize Your Duplicate Search Criteria

Choose preferences to select duplicates automatically

The options available to change the criteria when searching for duplicates are given in the "Duplicate Search Criteria" box on the left-hand side of the Tune Sweeper window.

Checking any of the boxes in this window will change the way Tune Sweeper determines if a track is a duplicate of another in iTunes.

Tune Sweeper always compares the Name of the tracks when considering if the tracks are duplicates.

For example, if only the Artist box is checked - two tracks are seen to be duplicates only if the Artist and Name of the tracks are the same.

In the example shown here, two tracks are determined to be duplicates if the Name and Artist of the track are the same and if the tracks lengths are no more than 3 seconds different.

Using these settings gives you a very powerful set of tools when analysing your iTunes library for duplicate tracks.

Click the 'Search' button to re scan your iTunes library for duplicates based on the modifications you have made in the 'Duplicate Search Criteria' box.

Duplicate Search Criteria Checkboxes

Here's what Tune Sweeper will do with your checkbox selections:

  • Artist - Two tracks must contain the same Artist to be considered the same.
  • Album - Two tracks must contain the same Album name to be considered the same.
  • Track# - Two tracks must contain the same track number to be considered the same.
  • Track Count - Two tracks must contain the same album track count to be considered the same.
  • Time - The duration of two tracks must be within the given number of seconds of each other to be considered the same. Change the time limit using the slider. For example, with this setting set to 3 seconds a track of duration 4:25 and 4:22 would be considered the same (provided their Names match also).
  • Podcasts - If the Podcast box is checked - all Podcasts are excluded from the duplicate search.
  • iTunesU - If the iTunesU box is checked - all iTunesU tracks are excluded from the duplicate search.
  • TV Shows - If the TV Shows box is checked - all TV Shows are excluded from the duplicate search.

Tune Sweeper is available as a free trial for Windows or Mac.

macOS Catalina
and higher

Tune Sweeper also works with the new Apple Music app.

Searching Duplicate Groups

You can search duplicate groups using the search field located to the top right of where the groups are listed. Simply type the name of the Artist, Album or Track Name which you would like to search for, and Tune Sweeper will automatically run the search.

Search for specific iTunes duplicate tracks

In the example above we have decided to search for "Cheryl". Only groups with fields containing "Cheryl" will now appear in the groups section.

You can now choose which groups/songs to ignore during the remove process. Once you are finished with these searched groups you can press 'Clear' next to the search field. This will re-display the full list of duplicates. Any modifications you have made to the duplicate groups are kept when they are re-listed in the full list of duplicates.