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Why Does I Tunes So Bad At Removing Duplicates?

We Why is it so difficult to delete duplicate songs using I Tunes? I want to delete all of the duplicate songs and not have I Tunes automatically synch any duplicates from the cloud, from Apple time capsules, Apple I Pad, or any other Apple crap or other better sources like my Android and Windows computers. I rarely buy any music from Apple because I already have a huge music library. What is the simplest way to use I Tunes to automatically find and delete duplicate songs and never have a duplicate added to my I Tunes library again. Love to heat from you Apple geniuses why I Tunes does not make this simple.

Airport Time Capsule 802.11ac Gen1

Posted on May 29, 2019 5:13 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 29, 2019 5:23 AM

If these are purchased items, and one of the tracks of each pair has a cloud download symbol, then try signing out of the iTunes store and back in again to resolve.



iTunes may create duplicates if the same content is repeatedly added from outside the media folder when it is set to make copies of anything that is added to the library, or is added from an external drive that hosts the media folder that was offline when iTunes was launched.



Apple's official advice on duplicates is here: Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership, or that sometimes the same file can be represented by multiple entries in the library and that deleting one and trashing the file will break any others.


Start in the Songs view. Use File > Library > Show Duplicate Items and then click Same Album to display exact duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the trash.



tt2

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 29, 2019 5:23 AM in response to Apple Is A Fraud

If these are purchased items, and one of the tracks of each pair has a cloud download symbol, then try signing out of the iTunes store and back in again to resolve.



iTunes may create duplicates if the same content is repeatedly added from outside the media folder when it is set to make copies of anything that is added to the library, or is added from an external drive that hosts the media folder that was offline when iTunes was launched.



Apple's official advice on duplicates is here: Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership, or that sometimes the same file can be represented by multiple entries in the library and that deleting one and trashing the file will break any others.


Start in the Songs view. Use File > Library > Show Duplicate Items and then click Same Album to display exact duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the trash.



tt2

Why Does I Tunes So Bad At Removing Duplicates?

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