Photo Neat
Duplicate photo finder for folders and external drives
Photo Neat finds duplicate photos, near-identical shots and screenshots, sets them aside so only your real photos stay, and sorts the rest into date folders. Every file is moved, never deleted, and every clean-up can be undone.
Everything set aside goes into one __photoneat folder inside your project.
Put a whole clean-up, a category or single files back where they were.
No account, no cloud, no uploads. Scanning runs entirely on your Mac.
Rescans reuse what they learned, and slow external disks are read gently.
If your photos live in folders, on an external drive, or in years of phone backups, Photos can't see them. Photo Neat works on any folder you choose, including its sub-folders, and leaves your folder structure as it is.
Clean Up
You review every group first. The best copy is kept for you (highest resolution, then largest, then oldest), and one click keeps a different one.
Best Shots
Every photo is scored for sharpness, exposure, faces and overall look (using Apple's own aesthetics score on macOS 15). The strongest ones are listed best first, ready to back up to another folder. Your originals stay where they are.
Organize by Date
Photos are dated by the capture date in their metadata, or by the file date when there is none. Preview every date folder with thumbnails before anything moves. Keep your structure with date folders inside each folder, or gather everything into one tree. Rerunning is safe: existing date folders are recognized, not nested.
Compare & Sync
Compare your photos with a backup disk and see what's new, changed, moved or extra, side by side. Sync copies only the differences. Files you reorganized are moved on the backup instead of copied again, and anything replaced or extra goes into an archive folder on the backup, so nothing is lost.
Videos
List every video in a folder tree, filter by name, type and size, and move the ones you pick to a folder of your choice, keeping their sub-folders. Live Photo clips are recognized and left alone unless you ask.
Mark a "Best of" or client folder as protected. Nothing in it is ever moved, and a copy there always wins.
A RAW+JPEG pair counts as one photo. Sidecars (.xmp, .aae) and Live Photo videos move and come back with their photo.
Pick any sub-folder at the top of the window to work on just that part, look through its folders, and double-click a photo or video to view it large.
What a scan learns about each photo is remembered, so the next scan only looks at photos that changed.
Spinning hard drives and network shares are read a few files at a time instead of all at once.
A native Mac app, written in SwiftUI, that follows your system appearance or your choice.
The main worry with any clean-up tool
Then you put it back. Photo Neat never deletes a photo. Files it sets aside go into one folder inside your project, in plain sight, and every move is written to a log you can open in any spreadsheet.
(1) suffix.Holiday Photos/ __photoneat/ cleanup/ duplicates/ extra copies of the same picture similar/ extra shots of the same scene screenshots/ screenshots logs/ cleanup-….csv every move: from, to, copy kept restore-….csv every file put back
Drop a photo folder or an external drive's folder on the window. Each one becomes a project you can come back to.
See every duplicate group, similar set and screenshot, with thumbnails. Switch off any group you want to leave as it is.
Move to Archive sets them aside in one folder. Changed your mind? Restore puts them back.
Careful matching is what makes a clean-up safe. Photo Neat uses several checks, and a photo only joins a group when all of them agree.
No. Files it sets aside are moved into __photoneat/cleanup inside your project folder, and Restore can put them back. You decide if and when to delete them, in Finder.
No. Photo Neat works on photos in ordinary folders: on your Mac, on external drives or on network shares. For photos inside the Photos app, Photos has its own Duplicates album.
Yes. It only reads files until you choose to move something, and slow external disks are read a few files at a time. Compare & Sync never overwrites or deletes: replaced and extra files go into an archive folder on the destination.
A RAW file and the JPEG or HEIC of the same shot count as one photo, not as duplicates. Sidecar files (.xmp, .aae) and the video half of a Live Photo stay with their photo when it moves, and come back with it on Restore.
Yes. Mark them as protected. Nothing in a protected folder is ever moved, and when a photo has a copy there, that copy is always the one kept.
JPEG, PNG, HEIC/HEIF, TIFF, GIF, BMP, WebP and common RAW formats (DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, ORF, RW2, SRW, PEF). The Videos tab finds MOV, MP4, M4V, AVI, MKV, MTS, 3GP, WMV, WebM, MPEG and more.
No. Everything runs on your Mac, and Photo Neat needs no account or internet connection to scan, review or move files. See the privacy page.
A Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. The Best Shots aesthetics score uses an Apple feature available from macOS 15.