albumlean
Find and remove duplicate videos in Photos on Mac
The same clip twice is easy to miss in Photos and expensive in iCloud. albumlean groups size-matched videos on your Mac so you can keep one copy and move the extras to Recently Deleted.
How the same video ends up in Photos twice
Duplicates in Photos are rarely mysterious. A clip is imported from a camera and AirDropped from a phone. A screen recording is saved, then saved again when the toolbar is used twice. An export lands in Photos beside the original. A family member sends the same movie a second time. Each copy looks reasonable in the grid. Together they double the bytes iCloud is asked to store.
Still photos have Apple’s own duplicate review in some versions of Photos. Video is where people get stuck: long clips, similar thumbnails, and no sort by real file size. Scrolling an album by eye does not scale past a few dozen movies. A library with years of iPhone video needs a different pass.
albumlean is that pass for videos only. It does not try to be a generic duplicate-file cleaner for Downloads or the whole disk. It reads the Photos library you authorize and helps you find video copies that are wasting the same iCloud plan.
Why a manual sweep fails
Two clips can share a subject and still be different files — a second take, a trim, a re-export. Two clips can look unrelated in the grid and still be the same bytes with different names. Eyeballing thumbnails guesses both ways. Duration alone is not enough either: a pair of 18-minute recordings can be identical or completely different.
Finder is the wrong place to resolve this. The files are inside the Photos library, and deleting them there bypasses Recently Deleted and iCloud Photos’ usual recovery path. Photos itself will show you a clip; it will not group extras by size or tell you how much those extras occupy.
A useful tool has to do two things at once: point at likely duplicate videos, and keep real file size in view so you clean the copies that actually matter. A pair of 12 GB imports is a different decision from a pair of 8 MB clips.
How albumlean groups extras
Videos with exactly the same byte size are grouped as duplicates, and the app calculates the space the extra copies take. That is a strong clue, not a cryptographic proof that the pictures are identical. Equal size is why you still preview; it is also why the heaviest groups belong at the front of the queue.
Select Extra Copies keeps the favorite in each group, or the oldest copy if none is a favorite. You can change the selection after you watch the clips. Combine that with the real-size sort so “large and duplicated” is the first work, not a random walk through the library.
Unknown-size videos — often iCloud-only on this Mac — stay labeled and last. They are not stuffed into a duplicate group as empty files. For the rest, scan locally, filter if you already know a filename pattern such as “Screen Recording”, and only then select extras.
Safe cleanup, with a recovery window
Every deletion in albumlean has to be confirmed. The app then asks Photos to move the selected videos to Recently Deleted. It does not erase files directly, and it does not skip the album that exists so you can change your mind. Photos typically keeps those items for about 30 days.
If iCloud Photos is on, the same deletion can sync to other devices on the Apple Account. Preview first when two clips might be a live take and a backup, not a true extra. If you want an offline copy, export the original before you confirm. Nothing in this flow uploads your library to albumlean; scanning and preview run on the Mac.
After extras are gone, a second pass by real size usually still finds a few giants that were never duplicated — the long recording, the 4K import. Continue with finding large videos in Photos. If the plan is already refusing new items, read what to do when iCloud is full of videos so you know why the Mac-side deletion may take time to show up in the quota.
When duplicate cleanup is the right first step
Start here if you import often, if screen recordings pile up with the same default names, or if you know a trip was copied onto the Mac more than once. Start with a size sort instead if you barely import and the library is dominated by a few huge originals. Many libraries need both: extras first, then the remaining heavy clips.
albumlean will not merge similar movies that are not the same size, and it will not invent a duplicate from a related still. That limit is intentional. You stay in control of which video Photos is asked to move, with a recovery window behind the confirm button.
Download the Mac app when you are ready to review groups on this machine. Pricing is there for the planned paid release; the current download does not charge and does not require an account.
Clear duplicate videos without leaving the Mac.
Download albumlean, review size-matched clips in Photos, and move extras to Recently Deleted. Local only — no upload.