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Imported your iPhone photos to your Mac? You may have them twice

Image Capture, Photos and AirDrop each keep their own copy, and a transfer setting can double file sizes. How to spot duplicates and keep one copy.

6 min read

A phone with 60 GB of photos plugged into a Mac with 50 GB free is the usual start of this story. The import runs, the disk fills, and afterwards nobody is sure where the pictures went or how many copies there now are.

Where imported photos end up

How you importedWhere the files goDuplicates checked?
Photos appInside the Photos library in PicturesYes, it asks about duplicates
Image CapturePictures, or a folder you choseNo
AirDropDownloadsNo
iCloud PhotosInside the Photos libraryYes

The common way to end up with two copies is to use more than one of these. Import with Image Capture to be safe, then add the same folder to Photos, and every picture is stored twice: once in Pictures and once inside the library.

Check for a second copy

# Size of the Photos library and the rest of Pictures
du -sh ~/Pictures/*

# Count iPhone photos and videos outside the Photos library
find ~/Pictures ~/Downloads ~/Desktop -path '*.photoslibrary' -prune -o \
  \( -iname '*.heic' -o -iname '*.mov' -o -iname 'IMG_*.jpg' \) -print | wc -l

If the second command finds thousands of files and your Photos library is also large, you very likely have two copies. File names like IMG_1234.HEIC are what an iPhone gives every picture, which makes them easy to find. Finding duplicate files can confirm the matches before you remove anything.

Why the same photos can take twice the space

An iPhone saves photos as HEIC and videos as HEVC by default, both much smaller than older formats. Apple's figure is that HEIC takes up to half the space of an equivalent JPEG.

On the iPhone, Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC decides what the Mac receives. Automatic converts to JPEG and H.264 as it copies, which can make the same library noticeably larger on the Mac than on the phone. Keep Originals copies the files as they are. Every current Mac opens HEIC and HEVC, so Keep Originals is the smaller choice.

Keeping one copy

  1. Decide where your photos should live. For most people that is the Photos app, because it handles iCloud, albums and search.
  2. Check the Photos library opens and shows the pictures you expect.
  3. Move the loose copies in Pictures, Downloads or Desktop to the Trash. Leave the Photos library itself alone.
  4. Empty the Trash once you have checked nothing is missing.

Importing without filling the disk

  • In Photos, open Settings, General. With Copy items to the Photos library turned on, Photos makes its own copy. If you want the originals to stay where they are, turn it off before importing, and do not delete those originals later.
  • In Image Capture, Delete after import removes the pictures from the phone once they are safely on the Mac, which is useful when freeing the phone is the goal.
  • If the Mac is short on space, import straight to an external drive by choosing it as the destination in Image Capture, or move the Photos library to an external drive.
  • With iCloud Photos on, Optimize Mac Storage keeps smaller versions on the Mac and the full ones in iCloud. See Photos library taking up space.

AirDropped photos are covered in AirDrop received files.

Common questions

Where do iPhone photos go when imported to a Mac?

With the Photos app, into the Photos library in your Pictures folder. With Image Capture, into Pictures or a folder you choose. With AirDrop, into Downloads. Using more than one method can leave two copies.

Does Image Capture check for duplicates?

No. Image Capture copies whatever you select, even if it is already on the Mac. The Photos app does check, and asks before importing a picture it already has.

Should I choose Automatic or Keep Originals when transferring iPhone photos?

Keep Originals, on any current Mac. It copies the HEIC and HEVC files as they are, which are smaller than the JPEG and H.264 copies that Automatic makes.

Is it safe to delete iPhone photos from Pictures if they are in Photos?

Yes, once you have checked the Photos library shows them, and as long as Photos was set to copy items into its library. Move the loose copies to the Trash and leave the library itself alone.

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