Features
Similar Photos
Similar Photos groups pictures that look alike — burst shots, near-identical frames, repeated screenshots — so you can keep the best of each set instead of all of them.
Short answer
Similar Photos groups images that are visually alike rather than byte-identical, so burst shots and repeated frames are presented as sets you review and thin down.
Similar Photos is a feature of Neatwise: Mac Cleaner, a macOS utility distributed through the Mac App Store.
Similar Photos groups images by visual resemblance, so near-identical frames are compared together.
What Similar Photos does
A duplicate finder compares contents. Two files either match or they do not, and the answer is exact. Photos do not work like that.
The pictures that actually accumulate are the ones that are nearly the same. Burst mode takes ten frames of one moment. A messaging app saves a compressed second copy of a picture you already had. You screenshot the same confirmation dialog three times in a week. Every one of those is a distinct file with distinct bytes, so an exact-match duplicate finder walks straight past them.
Similar Photos compares how images look, not what bytes they contain, and presents the near-matches as sets.
How it works
- It scans the folders you have authorized for image files.
- It compares images for visual resemblance and groups the close matches.
- Each group is shown with its images together, so you can compare them.
- You choose which to keep. Nothing is removed without your selection.
Why the choice stays with you
Automatically keeping “the first one” or “the largest one” is the obvious feature to build and the wrong one to ship. The best frame in a burst is often not the first — it is the one where nobody blinked. The largest file is often the least compressed copy, not the best picture.
Similar Photos does the part that is tedious, which is finding the groups. The judgement about which picture is better stays where it belongs.
How it differs from Duplicates
The two features answer different questions and both are needed:
- Duplicate File Finder — exact matches. The same file, copied. Safe to reduce to one.
- Similar Photos — visual matches. Different files that look alike. Needs a human to choose.
A photo library usually has both, and clearing one does not clear the other.
What Similar Photos does not do
- It does not delete anything on its own; every removal is a selection you made.
- It does not edit, retouch or reorganise your library.
- It does not upload images anywhere. Comparison happens on your Mac, like every other part of Neatwise: Mac Cleaner.
Where it fits
Similar Photos appears alongside the Duplicate File Finder in How to Find Duplicate Files on Mac, which covers the difference between the two and the order to use them in.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a duplicate photo and a similar photo?
- A duplicate is the same file twice — identical bytes, often from copying a folder or importing an album twice. The Duplicate File Finder catches those. A similar photo is a different file that looks nearly the same: the next frame of a burst, a second attempt at the same shot, a screenshot taken moments apart. Those have different bytes, so a duplicate finder cannot see them.
- Why do I have so many near-identical photos?
- Three habits produce them. Burst mode and Live Photos capture several frames per press. Camera apps and messaging apps often save a second copy after compression. And screenshotting is easy enough that people take five versions of the same thing rather than one. None of these are mistakes — they just accumulate.
- Which photo does it keep?
- It does not decide. It groups the near-identical images and shows them together so you can compare resolution, sharpness and framing and keep the one you want. Automatically choosing for you would throw away the sharp frame in favour of the first one taken.
- Will it touch my photo library?
- It works on the folders you grant it access to, the same as every other part of Neatwise. Anything it removes goes to the Trash first, so a mistake is recoverable.
Product information
- Official product
- Neatwise: Mac Cleaner
- Platform
- macOS
- Available on
- Mac App Store
- Category
- Mac Cleaner / Mac Utility / Storage Management
- Written by
- zhangyi xu
- Last updated