How to Delete Duplicates from Your iTunes Library

iTunes duplicates may be generated  for a few reasons. These occur not only with iTunes music, but also movies, podcasts and books. The larger your iTunes libraries are, the higher the possibility that you've got tons of iTunes duplicates. Fortunately, iTunes allows you to easily fix this problem. Today, we will show you how to delete duplicates from iTunes, no matter they are music duplicates, or movie duplicates, podcast duplicates and book duplicates.

How to Remove iTunes Duplicates

Here's the basic work flow to delete duplicate items from iTunes:

1. Open iTunes and select Music/Movies/Podcasts/Books under Library.

2. Go to File > Display Duplicates and iTunes will show all of the duplicate items in your library.

3. Choose duplicate items you want to remove from iTunes library.

4. Press the Delete key on your keyboard.

5. You will be prompted to either keep the duplicate files in your iTunes folder or remove it from hard drive to Trash, which you can finally delete whenever you like.

Delete iTunes Duplicates Tips:

1. To select multiple iTunes duplicates, hold down Shift or Command key, and click the duplicate files you want. On Windows, the corresponding keys would be Shift and Ctrl.

2. According to my experience, most of the iTunes duplicates have the name patter of * 1.m4a, * 2.m4a, etc. Therefore, once the duplicate files are displayed, right click and select Show in Finder, then search 1.m4a for iTunes duplicates and delete them directly from your hard drive.

Prevent iTunes Duplicates

To help prevent duplicate items in your library, you can enable two options in iTunes.

1. Open iTunes and select iTunes > Preferences > Advanced tab.

2. Check the two options illustrated below.

If these two options are activated, when you import media to your iTunes library, the media files would be copied to your iTunes folder. This way, you are not allowed to import duplicate items next time.