The duplicate finder that sees near-misses.
Exact duplicates are the easy part; iOS already merges those. The real clutter is the fifth, ninth and nineteenth take of the same shot. SpectraSort stacks duplicates, bursts and look-alikes together, flags the sharpest in each stack, and lets you clear the rest in one decision.
Three kinds of "duplicate"
- Exact copies — same file saved twice. Apple Photos' built-in Duplicates album detects and merges these (and near-exact variants) already.
- Bursts and retakes: many frames of the same moment, seconds apart, none of them byte-identical. Built-in tools leave these alone, and they make up most of the clutter.
- Look-alikes: the same shot of the same skyline, taken months apart. No exact-match scan will ever connect them.
SpectraSort's Dedupe tool targets all three, because it compares what's in the photos, not the files.
Each repeated moment costs one decision.
Dedupe hands you stacks, not a list. Each group of repeats comes with the sharpest frame flagged; you accept the flag or pick a different keeper, and the stack is settled.
The screenshot is from a real pass: 315 photos pulled into stacks, most of them pairs, a few a dozen deep, and one rose photographed 19 times. Each stack shows its count and its top score.
Inside a stack, the takes sit on a wheel, so you can roll through them without leaving the photo. When you're done, one batch clears the rejects through the system confirmation dialog. Nothing is deleted without your tap.
Straight answers about storage
Cleaning apps love a big “you freed 4.2 GB!” number. On iOS that number isn't true at the moment of deletion. Deleted photos move to Recently Deleted, and the space comes back when that album empties, either after 30 days or when you empty it yourself. SpectraSort tells you that instead of showing a figure it can't stand behind.
It also touches only your photo library, never the rest of your phone. The comparison itself runs on the iPhone's Neural Engine, so your photos are never uploaded to be scanned.
- iPhone only, iOS 18.5 or later. No iPad, Android or desktop version.
- The first index of a big library takes a while. It only happens once.
- Deleted photos spend 30 days in iOS's Recently Deleted album, so the storage comes back later, not right away. SpectraSort doesn't show a “GB freed” number because it would be a guess.
Free to try. $19.99 once to keep.
Five sorts a week are free, forever, with no account and no credit card. Premium is a single $19.99 purchase that removes the cap and unlocks Studio. No subscription, ever. Built by an indie dev who uses it daily.
Download on the App Store