Detect Duplicates, Copy Edits, and Lock Folders in Photos on the iPhone with iOS 16

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In this video, we’re going to look at what’s new in the Photos app on the iPhone with iOS 16. We have duplicate detection, which can help find duplicate photos and videos, and then we can merge them together to save space, we can lock the hidden and recently deleted albums, we can also copy edits we’ve made from one photo and paste them into another photo. And we can undo multiple edits and see what edits have been undone. And then we can also turn off memories and featured content from showing in our photos app, as well as the photos widget. Let’s take a look at these new features in iOS 16 on the iPhone, let’s go over to my iPhone.

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Let’s first look at duplicate detection. The first thing that we need to do is we need to open up our photos app. So I’m going to go to my photos app here and open it up. Now to find duplicates that works with both photos and videos. To find duplicates, what you need to do is go to all of your albums here. So I go to albums down at the bottom. And then we have a list of all of our different albums. And when we go over to utilities, what you’re going to see if you have duplicates, is an album for duplicates. When I tap on this, I can see all of the different duplicates that the iPhone has detected. Now how does the iPhone determine what is a duplicate? Well basically uses two different methods. If we go down towards the bottom here, you’re gonna see a brief paragraph explaining what it does. So basically, what it’s going to do is duplicates are classified both as exact copies, that’s what these are, these are exact copies, but they may have different metadata, maybe they have a different title or a different date. Again, the photo itself is an exact copy. But the metadata that’s tied to it may be different.

So it’s a duplicate. But also what it may do is find duplicates that appear to be the same. So it’s going to use a little machine language to determine if it is the same. With these, they may have different resolutions, you might have a large photo along with a smaller photo, as well as the file format and other slight differences. Basically, what you’re going to want to do with either one of these is you’re going to want to merge them to save up space, when you merge them, what it’s going to do is it’s going to save the larger file the higher resolution file, but it’s also going to merge all of the metadata together.

So if you have a large file that has no title and a smaller file that has a title, what it will do is it’ll delete the smaller file, but it will take that title and apply to the larger file. So basically just merges them together, saving the best quality photo or video, just think of it that way. It’s merging all of the data. But it’s saving the best photo or the best video the best quality photo or video. So how do we merge these together? Well, basically, all we have to do is just go over to merge, and it’ll merge them. When you’re looking at these, you’re going to see that this one here is one and a half megabytes. And this one here is one and a half megabytes. So these are exact copies, I don’t need to have both of these on my iPhone, it’s taken up space. So I just go over here to merge,

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I confirm that I want to merge them. And now those are merged, I can also go up to select in the upper right hand corner. And when I tap on this, what I’m able to do is select multiple duplicates, and then merge those together. So basically, what it’s going to do is merge these two together, and then it’ll merge these two together, I’m actually going to cancel this. So that’s basically how duplicate detection works. Now it may take a little bit for that album to show when you go over to all of your albums here. You may not see duplicates right away, it does take a while to analyze it, especially if you have a lot of photos or videos. So that’s basically how duplicate detection works. Now let’s take a look at how we can lock our hidden and recently deleted albums. This is New in iOS 16 as well. I’m going to go back over to all of my albums here.

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Now when we look down towards the bottom where our utilities are, you’re going to see that I have my hidden album. This is where I can hide my photos. And then I also have my recently deleted album. Well, if we look you’re going to see that we have a little lock symbol to the right of them. They are now locked in past versions of iOS, when you had these albums, anyone that had access to your phone if the phone was unlocked, they’d be able to take a look at these photos. Now even though the phone might be unlocked, no one is going to be able to get into these albums unless they know the passcode. So I’m going to tap on hidden here and I’m not going to look at my phone, I’m just going to look away, you’re going to see it is not opening up. But now when I enter in the code,

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I can view that album. Or when I go back, now I’m going to look at the phone, and I’m going to open it up, we can see it recognize my face, and it opened it up.

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So our hidden album and our recently deleted, recently deleted albums are now locked. If you want to show the hidden album, what we need to do is we need to go to our settings app. And then what you’ll need to do is go over to the photos settings.

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And under photos, what you’re going to see is Show Hidden album, this is nothing new, we always had this hidden album, or we’ve had over the last few years. But again, it wasn’t locked. Now when I turn this on, it’ll show and that utilities just like it always did in the utilities albums here.

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But now, in addition to being hidden, we can now lock it. So any of these photos are not going to show in the library, the only way that we can see them is if we tap on hidden or recently deleted. And we either need to know the passcode or needs to recognize our face or our fingerprint if you have a home button. Another new feature that I didn’t see coming was we can copy and paste edits. Let’s go into a photo. So I’m going to go into this photo here. Let’s go and edit it. So now I just go up under edit here.

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And I’m going to make a few changes to it. So what I’m going to do is just swipe over here, let’s go and make some drastic changes to it. And now what I want to do is I want to copy those changes that I made and apply it to another photo. To do that, all we have to do is just copy it. So I just go up to the three dots in the upper right hand corner.

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And from here, what I’m able to do is copy the edits, it’s not going to copy the photo, what it’s going to do is copy the edits all the edits that I made to it. So let’s go ahead and copy. And now I’m going to go to another photo. So I’m just going to cancel this.

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We’re gonna go to this photo here. Oops, that’s a video, let’s go to this photo here, I want to paste those edits that I made. While I just go up to the three dots here, I don’t even have to edit it, all I have to do is go to the More button here. That’s what these three dots are, I go to the More button, and you’re going to see paste edits. I tap on this.

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And now it pasted those edits that I copied from the other photo. So now let’s go to this photo, we’re going to do the same thing paste edits. So I can go through and paste these edits to all of my photos. So if you added a vignette to a photo and you want to add that same vignette to all of your photos, that’s how you can easily do it. Now. We can also undo and redo edits, and we can see what we are undoing and redoing. Let’s go back over to that original photo here.

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I’m going to go and make some changes to it. Just go and tap on these randomly. And now what I’d like to do is undo those. To undo those, what we do is we go to the upper left hand corner and I can undo those. Every time I tap on this, what it’s going to do is undo the most recent edit. Also, what you’re going to see is what the Edit was right above the photo here right at the top of the photo. So I’m going to tap on the Undo and watch this area here.

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As I’m tapping, we can see what changes I made and what it is undoing I want to redo them. I tap on the redo and we can see what it is re doing or what edits it is making. And then last, we can also hide our memories. So when we’re looking at our I’m going to cancel this when we’re looking at our photos here, what we can do is we can view our memories I’m going to go to for you we have memories here. Also we can see these memories in our widgets here.

What we’re able to do if you don’t like those widgets, what you’re able to do now is turn those off. To turn those off. We just go over to our settings. And then we have to be in our photo settings again, we can see that I’m still in my photo settings. And then down towards the bottom you’re going to see show featured content. All I have to do is just turn this off and now we can see that featured content is turned off. So it’s not going to show any memories in this widget. This is a memory widget. So if I have it off, it’s not going to show it. And when I go over to my photos app featured content is turned off, so it’s not going to show any of my featured content. They also added a couple new memories with it. We have this day in history and children plane. So if you do have this on, you will see a few more memory categorizations.

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So that is what is new with the Photos app and iOS 16. We have duplicate detection, which can save space. Basically, what it’ll do is it’ll analyze your photos, and it’ll save when you merge photos and videos together. What it’ll do is it’ll save the highest quality photo or video, but it will merge all of the metadata together. Also, we can now lock our hidden and recently deleted albums. We can copy edits we’ve made from one photo to another photo, and then we can undo and redo multiple edits and see what edits we have undone or what we are redoing.

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And then if you want to turn off your memories and featured content, you can do that as well. So that is what is new with the Photos app in iOS 16.