How to find similar and burst photos in Google Photos

Google Photos does not have a built-in finder for similar or burst photos. At the time of writing, its "Manage storage" page suggests large files, blurry photos and screenshots for review, but it will not group ten near-identical shots of the same moment. To find similar shots and bursts you can scroll through your library by date and compare by hand, or use a tool such as a Chrome extension that compares photos on your computer and shows you each set so you can keep the best one.

Three kinds of doubles

Not every double is the same. It helps to know which kind you are dealing with, because each one is found differently.

Type	What it looks like	How it gets there
Exact duplicate	The same photo, pixel for pixel, with the same file size	Backed up twice, re-saved from a chat, imported from a memory card and again from the phone
Similar shot	The same scene a moment apart, with slightly different framing or expression	You took three to be safe, or an edited copy sits next to the original
Burst photo	Five to thirty frames taken in under a second	Holding the shutter button, or the phone's burst mode kicking in

Exact duplicates are the easy case. Two files that match byte for byte are the same photo, and any one of them can go. Similar shots and bursts are harder. The frames differ a little, so no simple comparison will catch them, and one frame is usually better than the rest. That is the one you want to keep.

What Google Photos can and cannot do

Google Photos is good at a lot of things, but finding lookalikes is not one of them.

What it can do, at the time of writing:

• Skip exact duplicates during backup. If you upload the same file again from the same account, Google Photos usually recognises it and does not store a second copy. This only works for byte-identical files. A re-saved or edited copy is a new file as far as Google is concerned.
• Suggest blurry photos. On the "Manage storage" page under "Review and delete", there is a "Blurry photos" group. It is a reasonable first pass, but it judges each photo on its own. It does not know that a sharp version of the same shot sits right next to the blurry one.
• Suggest screenshots and large files. Useful for a clean-up, but not related to doubles.
• Stack some bursts on certain Android phones. Some phones group burst frames in the on-device gallery and suggest a top shot. That grouping does not always survive the trip to Google Photos on the web, and it does not reach across days or albums.

What it cannot do:

• It has no "find similar photos" button.
• It does not group bursts across your whole library.
• It cannot tell you which frame in a burst is the sharpest.

So the work falls to you, or to a tool.

Manual method: find similar shots by hand

If your library is small, or you only want to tidy one event, a manual pass works well. Set aside half an hour.

1. Open photos.google.com on a computer. A big screen makes comparing easier than a phone.
2. Pick an event. Use the search bar to find a date, a place or a person, or scroll to a holiday in the timeline.
3. Switch to the largest thumbnail size using the slider in the top right, so you can see detail without opening each photo.
4. Look for runs of near-identical thumbnails. Bursts stand out as a row of the same scene.
5. Hover over the first one and tick the circle in its corner, then hold Shift and click the last one in the run to select the whole range.
6. Open the first photo, press the right arrow to step through the set, and note which one you like. Untick that one.
7. Click the bin icon. The rest go to trash, where they stay for 30 days.

Tips that save time:

• Use the info panel (press "i") to compare file sizes. A much smaller copy is often the compressed version from a chat app.
• Zoom in on faces. Closed eyes and motion blur are easiest to spot at full size.
• Do one event per sitting. Fatigue leads to mistakes, and mistakes mean trips to the trash to restore.

Manual tidying is honest work, but it does not scale. A library of 15,000 photos holds thousands of bursts and similar shots scattered over years, and you will not find them by scrolling.

Automated method: let a tool compare for you

Dedicated duplicate finders look at the content of each photo rather than the file name or size. The common approach is a visual comparison: the tool makes a small fingerprint of what the picture looks like and then measures how close two fingerprints are. Two frames from a burst score as very close. Two different holidays do not.

There are a few kinds of tools:

• Desktop apps that work on a folder of files. These need you to download your whole library first, which can mean hundreds of gigabytes. They then find doubles locally, and you still have to go back and delete the matches in Google Photos by hand.
• Cloud services that connect to your account. Convenient, but your photos are sent to someone else's server to be compared. Read the privacy policy before you connect one.
• Browser extensions that work on the Google Photos web page. These sit between the two. The comparison runs on your computer inside the browser, and the clean-up happens directly in your library.

Doppelgone is an example of the third kind. It is a free Chrome extension for desktop Chrome that works on photos.google.com. It finds the three kinds of doubles in this article, exact duplicates, similar shots and burst photos, and shows you each set. Your photos never leave your device. Duplicates are found right inside Chrome. In our testing on a real library of about 15,000 photos, Doppelgone found roughly 4 GB of duplicates. For a full comparison of the options, see duplicate photo finders for Google Photos compared.

How tools judge the "best shot"

When a set of lookalikes is found, something has to decide which one to keep. The sensible way is to score each frame on a few things people actually care about:

• Eyes open. Faces are detected, and frames where someone is blinking score lower.
• Sharpness. Blurry or shaky frames score lower, measured by how much fine detail the frame contains.
• Exposure. Frames that are badly under or over lit score lower.
• Resolution and file size. If two copies are otherwise the same, the larger, uncompressed one is kept.

The highest scorer becomes the suggested keeper. In Doppelgone, that is the photo where eyes are open, faces are sharp and the light is right. The important part is that it is a suggestion. You can tap any other photo in the group to keep that one instead. No automatic picker knows that the slightly blurry frame is the one where your daughter is laughing.

Keeping the right one

Whichever method you use, a few habits keep the clean-up safe.

1. Review before you remove. Look at each set, even if it is only a glance. Pick the one with the best expression, not just the sharpest.
2. Keep the original over the edit, unless you prefer the edit. Edits can be recreated. The original cannot.
3. Keep the largest file when the frames look identical. It is the one with the most detail.
4. Leave favourites alone. If you starred a photo, past you had a reason. Doppelgone never touches favourites, videos, motion photos or photos shared with you.
5. Use the trash as a safety net. Everything removed from Google Photos goes to trash for 30 days, and nothing is gone until the trash is emptied. If a tool offers an undo, use it. In Doppelgone, removed photos go to Google Photos' trash and there is a one-click undo. How the trash works is covered in Google Photos trash explained.

Why bursts take up so much space

A single burst can be 20 frames at 3 to 5 MB each. That is up to 100 MB for one moment. Do that at every birthday, football match and sunset over a few years and bursts quietly become one of the biggest slices of a full library. Similar shots add up the same way, just more slowly. Clearing them is one of the few ways to recover meaningful space without losing a single memory. If your storage is already full, Google Photos storage full walks through the other options too.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google Photos have a similar photo finder?

No. At the time of writing, Google Photos skips exact duplicate uploads and suggests blurry photos, screenshots and large files on its "Manage storage" page, but it has no feature that groups similar shots or bursts for you.

What is the difference between a duplicate and a similar photo?

A duplicate is the same file twice, identical in every pixel. A similar photo is a different frame of the same scene, taken moments apart. Bursts are a run of similar photos captured in under a second.

Will a duplicate finder delete the wrong photo?

A good one will not delete anything outright. It groups the lookalikes, suggests the best shot, lets you change the pick, and moves the rest to Google Photos' trash, where you have 30 days to restore them.

Can I find similar photos in the Google Photos phone app?

Only by scrolling and comparing by hand. The phone app has the same "Manage storage" suggestions as the web, and some Android phones stack bursts in the gallery, but there is no library-wide similar photo search. A desktop browser and an extension are the practical route.

What to do next

Start with one event and tidy it by hand to get a feel for what you are looking for. If that shows you how many doubles you have, add Doppelgone to Chrome and let it find the rest. It is free to scan, and the first 200 clean-ups are free too.