The 6 Best Duplicate Music Finder Methods

Duplicate songs can quickly take over your music library.

They often build up when syncing devices, downloading tracks, or moving your music between apps — and it doesn't take long before things start to feel cluttered.

In this guide, we'll show you 6 reliable ways to find and remove duplicate music from your devices.

Why Do Duplicate Songs Appear?

Duplicate music can be created when you:

• Sync music across multiple devices
• Import the same tracks more than once
• Copy and paste files between folders
• Download songs from different sources
• Restore backups or transfer libraries

Duplicate Music Finders for PC and Mac

Having duplicated songs can quickly clutter your music library as well as taking up valuable storage space on your computer.

If you use iTunes or Apple Music app, you can quickly find duplicates within the app. And if you want a quicker, more automated option, tools like Tune Sweeper can do the job for you.

For music stored outside those apps, the lightweight Duplicate Sweeper app can scan your computer and remove duplicate files and photos as well as music!

1. Removing duplicates with iTunes and Apple Music

First up is Apple's own apps. If you have duplicate tracks listed in iTunes or the Apple Music on Mac, you can be listening to the same song multiple times in the same list - this can be pretty annoying.

These apps provide a feature that will list these duplicate songs for you. Though it doesn't provide any filters to help choose the best file to delete (see Method 2 for automatic selection of the best tracks to keep), you can then go through and remove the ones you don't want at your leisure.

How to delete duplicate songs on Apple Music or iTunes

1. Open Apple Music or iTunes on your computer.
2. Go to File > Library > Show Duplicate Items.
   
3. Select the duplicate tracks you want to delete.
4. Right-click a selected track, then click "Delete from Library".
   

Summary (iTunes / Apple Music):

✔ Use directly within iTunes / Apple Music
✔ Easy to Use
✘ No automatic duplicate selection

 

2. Removing duplicate music with Tune Sweeper

Apple's built-in tools can find duplicate songs, but they're limited — especially with larger libraries. Sorting through duplicates manually can quickly become time-consuming and frustrating.

Tune Sweeper is a fantastic duplicate music finder app which helps you manage your iTunes or Apple Music for Mac library. It provides absolute control of how duplicates are found, and which are deleted. Tune Sweeper gives the ability to find duplicates based on Artist, Album, Track #, Track Count and Time Difference, so you can find only the tracks that you need to remove.

As well as finding duplicates, it intelligently allows you to remove duplicates based on preferences like "Highest Quality", "Longest Duration", and "Latest Added" - this can cut your time managing your library drastically.

How to automatically find and remove duplicate music with Tune Sweeper

1. Launch Tune Sweeper on your computer

   Download and install Tune Sweeper on your PC or Mac, then open the program.

2. Search for duplicate music

   Open the "Duplicates" feature in Tune Sweeper.

   Set the criteria for your search using the checkboxes. By default, duplicates will be searched for by matching Name (track title) and Artist.

   Then, click "Search for Duplicates".

3. Select which tracks to remove

   Manually choose which tracks to delete by using the checkboxes next to the files in the list.

   Or use the "Keep Selection Preferences" to automatically decide which track to keep from a group of duplicates, by highest quality, longest duration, latest added, etc.

4. Remove duplicates

   Click "Remove Duplicates" to delete the selected duplicate entries from your iTunes / Apple Music library.

More info on Tune Sweeper Download Tune Sweeper Trial

Tune Sweeper also boasts lots of other helpful features like downloading missing artwork to your albums, fixing track information, and deleting track entries which are no longer available on your computer. Watch the video to see what Tune Sweeper can do.

Summary (Tune Sweeper):

✔ Quick and Easy
✔ User-friendly interface
✔ Automatic duplicate selection based on your preferences
✔ Free trial
✔ Other iTunes clean-up features
✔ For use with iTunes and Apple Music

 

3. Removing duplicate music files with Duplicate Sweeper

If you don't use iTunes or Apple Music to manage your music library, you can use Duplicate Sweeper to find and remove duplicate music from your computer.

Duplicate Sweeper can quickly clean up duplicate music, as well as photos, videos and other files on your PC and Mac - making it an attractive choice if your computer needs a general cleanup.

How to find and remove duplicate music files from your computer using Duplicate Sweeper

1. Open Duplicate Sweeper on your computer

   Download and install Duplicate Sweeper on your PC or Mac, then launch the program.

2. Add the folders in which you want to search for duplicates

   You can drag and drop folders from File Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) into Duplicate Sweeper or use the "Add Folder" button to browse for a folder to add.

3. Find Duplicates in your folders

   Click "Start Duplicate Search" to scan the selected folders for duplicates.

4. Select which files to keep

   Automatically choose which file in each duplicate group to keep, by selecting to keep: Latest Modified, Earliest Modified, Latest Created or Earliest Created.

   Or manually choose which files to remove by using the checkboxes next to a file in the list.

5. Remove the selected Duplicates

   Click "Recycle Selected Duplicates" (PC) or "Trash Selection" (Mac).

More info on Duplicate Sweeper Download Duplicate Sweeper Trial

Summary (Duplicate Sweeper):

✔ Quick and Easy
✔ User-friendly interface
✔ Automatic duplicate selection based on your preferences
✔ Free trial
✔ Find and remove files and photos as well as music

 

Duplicate Music Finders for Android

If your music library is stored on your Android device, it's even more important to deal with any duplicate music files, as they can take up significant space on your phone.

Thankfully, there is usually a built-in way to deal with duplicate files. Let's take a look at the most popular ones: Files by Google and My Files by Samsung.

4. Deleting duplicate music from Android with Files by Google

Many Android devices come with Google apps installed as default. The Files by Google app offers helpful suggestions about how to clear space on your device like deleting large files, old screenshots, blurry photos and duplicate files.

If your device doesn't have the Files by Google app, you can download it for free from the Google Play Store.

How to remove duplicate music with Files by Google

1. Launch the Files by Google app on your Android device.
2. Open the menu and then tap Clean.
3. Choose Delete Duplicates.
4. Select all the music and other files you want to delete.
5. Tap Move file/s to Trash.

Summary (Files by Google):

✔ Easy to use
✔ Helpful suggestions to optimize device storage
✔ Free
✔ Find and remove files and photos as well as music
✘ You must manually choose which duplicates to delete

 

5. Removing duplicate songs from Android with My Files by Samsung

If you use a Samsung device, you can use the built-in My Files app by Samsung to manage duplicate music and files.

This app works similarly to Files by Google above in that it will offer suggestions as to how you can optimize the storage on your device.

How to remove duplicate music with My Files by Samsung

1. Open the My Files app on your Samsung device.
2. Tap Analyze Storage.
3. Scroll down and tap the Duplicate files section.
4. Select any files you want to delete, then tap Delete.

Summary (My Files by Samsung):

✔ Easy to use
✔ Helpful suggestions to optimize device storage
✔ Free
✔ Find and remove files and photos as well as music
✘ You must manually choose which duplicates to delete

 

Duplicate Music Finders for iPhone

Unfortunately, if you have duplicate music on your iPhone, there's not an easy way to find and remove them, like the methods we've seen for computer and Android above. You can delete duplicate tracks one at a time in the iPhone Music app, but you'll have to find them yourself which can take a long time.

You can still get help finding and deleting duplicate music on your iPhone, but it will require the use of a computer.

6. Deleting duplicate music from iPhone with a computer

To avoid painstakingly weeding out duplicate songs from your iPhone, you'll need the help of a PC or Mac. Check out our full guide on how to use Tune Sweeper on your computer to help remove duplicate music from your iPhone.

This process requires clearing your music library of duplicates, and then syncing that clean library with your iPhone.

Summary (Deleting duplicate music on iPhone):

This is the trickiest method in this guide, as there are multiple steps and programs required to remove duplicate songs from an iPhone. However, if you follow the guide closely, you'll be able to achieve this!

 

Comparison & Conclusion

There you have it! You should now have all the information you need to be able to remove pesky duplicate songs from any of your devices - whether you have a Windows PC, Mac, Android or iPhone.

If you're still unsure which method to choose, let's compare the options to see which one works best for you.

Enjoy your newly cleaned music libraries and the storage space freed up by this process.

Thanks for reading!