How to remove duplicate music from your iPhone

Summary

If your iPhone contains duplicate music, the easiest way to remove duplicates is to ensure that your iTunes or Mac Music library is free of duplicates and then resync your iPhone with your library.

How to remove duplicate tracks from your iPhone using Tune Sweeper

1. Download and install Tune Sweeper on your PC or Mac.
2. Launch Tune Sweeper and click "Search for Duplicates".
3. Tune Sweeper will scan your iTunes / Mac Music library, and return any duplicate tracks.
4. Manually choose which files to remove, or allow Tune Sweeper to do it automatically by selecting a "Keep Selection Preference".
5. Once you're happy with the selections, click "Remove Duplicates".
6. Use iTunes or Mac Music to sync your updated music library with your iPhone. Your cleaned-up library will be reflected on your iPhone.

Detailed Steps

1. Firstly, you'll need to check whether your iTunes or Mac Music library contains duplicate tracks. You can use Tune Sweeper to do this by launching the program on your computer, and then selecting "Search For Duplicates".

   

2. If your library doesn't contain any duplicate tracks and also contains your full collection of music, you can simply re-sync your iPhone with your library and it should remove any duplicate tracks on your iPhone. See step 5.

   Important: Ensure your music library is complete before syncing

   When you sync your library from your computer to your iPhone, all the music on the iPhone will be replaced by the music from your computer.

   So, to prevent losing any music, it's crucial that you have all your iPhone music on your computer before syncing. You can use our other product, TouchCopy, to copy all the music from your iPhone to your iTunes or Mac Music library on your computer.

   Put another way, any music on your iPhone which is not in your iTunes/Music library will be deleted from your iPhone when syncing with your computer. TouchCopy allows you to safely copy your music from your iPhone to your computer without the risk of it being deleted. Check out our guide on how to copy music from iPhone to iTunes/Music with TouchCopy.

3. Once Tune Sweeper has found all the duplicate tracks in your library, you can remove them from your computer. To do this, you'll need to choose which tracks to keep and remove in each duplicate group.
   • Manual selection: Click the checkbox labelled "Remove" to mark a track for deletion.
   • Automatic selection: Use the "Keep Selection Preferences" to automatically mark a single track to keep in each duplicate group. Any other tracks per group will be marked for deletion. You can keep tracks based on track quality, duration, format, age and more.
   
4. After all selections have been made, click the "Remove Duplicates" button. You'll be able to check over all the tracks you've marked for deletion before finally removing them.
   Check out our user guide for more information on deleting duplicates from iTunes or Mac Music.
5. Your iTunes or Mac Music library should now contain all your music, and be free from duplicate tracks. You're now ready to sync your iPhone with your library.

How to sync music from iTunes to iPhone

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer with a USB cable.
2. Launch iTunes if it does not open automatically.
3. Click your device icon and select the music header.
4. Tick the box to enable music syncing and choose to sync your entire library or only selected music.
5. Click "Sync" to start the sync.

How to sync music from Mac to iPhone using Finder

1. Open Finder and connect your iPhone to your Mac.
2. Select your iPhone from the list of Locations in Finder.
3. Click the Music header, then check the box to "Sync music onto [your name]'s phone".
4. Choose to sync your entire library from Mac, or only selected music.
5. Click "Apply" to start the sync.

After following these steps, see this article if you have issues with Tune Sweeper removing duplicates from your music library.