Dupe guide

Clean up duplicate songs in your Mac Music library

Use Music.app's built-in duplicate finder, then catch what it misses with a byte-level scan.

4 min read

Music.app (and iTunes before it) was famously bad at preventing duplicate imports. Plug in an iPod, sync it back, re-import a CD you’d already ripped, and Music quietly creates a second track. After a few years your library is bloated with duplicates that show up in shuffle and play counts.

The built-in fix: Show Duplicate Items

  1. Open Music.
  2. Go to File > Library > Show Duplicate Items. You’ll see a filtered view of songs with matching Name and Artist.
  3. For stricter matching, hold Option and click File > Library > Show Exact Duplicate Items. This adds Album and Duration to the match.
  4. Sort by Name, Album, or Date Added.
  5. Right-click duplicates and choose “Delete from Library.” When Music asks, choose “Move to Trash” so the underlying file actually gets removed.

This handles songs Music knows about. It does not handle:

Catch the rest with Dupe

Dupe scans your Music folder at the filesystem level and finds byte-identical files regardless of tags.

  1. Download Dupe and open it.
  2. Click “Add Folder” and add ~/Music plus any other folders where audio files might live.
  3. Click “Scan.” Every .mp3, .m4a, .aac, .flac, .wav, and .alac file gets a SHA-256 hash.
  4. Review duplicate groups by file path.
  5. Move copies to the Trash.

A note on order: clean Music.app’s library first with Show Duplicate Items so the library stays consistent. Then run Dupe over ~/Music to catch the loose files and old library remnants that Music.app never saw.

What Dupe won’t do:

Safety:

Two passes — one inside Music.app, one with Dupe — usually clears the entire duplicate backlog from years of accumulated imports.

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