How to Delete Duplicate Songs From an iTunes Library

Your iTunes library is your favorite place to store, manage and share your music. Unfortunately, occasionally you run out of space to keep all of your songs or you mistakenly have multiple copies of songs that you don't need. You can always free up room on your hard drive by deleting duplicate songs from your iTunes library.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 
    
   iTunes icon.

   Open your iTunes application. If you have a Mac, it's accessed through your dock. If you have a PC, it's accessed through the icon on your desktop or from the start menu.

2. 
    
   Show duplicates.

   Click "View" from the iTunes navigation bar and scroll down to "Show duplicates." This brings up a list of all the items in your iTunes library that share a title name and an artist.

3. 
    
   Display of duplicate songs.

   To delete songs individually on a PC, right click on the particular song and scroll to "Delete" from the list of options. If you are using a Mac, right click by holding down Ctrl and clicking on the single mouse button, then choose "Move to Trash" from the list of options.

4. 
    
   Delete notice.

   Confirm the deletion. Be sure to move it to the trash; otherwise the song name remains in the library but the file path is deleted, thereby creating a broken link.

5. Select multiple songs to be deleted (on a PC) by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the songs with your mouse. On a Mac, you can select multiple songs by holding down the (Apple or Command) key and then clicking with the mouse button. As in the above step, right click on the group of chosen songs and select "Delete" or "Move to Trash" from the list of options.

6. Switch out of the "Show Duplicates" view when you are done deleting your extra songs by going back to the top iTunes file menu and selecting "View > Show All." This returns you to your normal iTunes library view.

[santoz64]

on 11/2/2009 If you use Windows. Go to View > Show duplicates, or File > Show duplicates on newer iTunes, then you need to unselect songs that you don't want to delete manually one by one. Then delete them.

There's a program to help you clean iTunes from duplicate songs easily called iDeduper:
http://www.ideduper.com

It will save your time with Auto Mark feature that will automatically select duplicates but one on each duplicates groups.

[markelsoft]

on 8/20/2009 Try Dupe Eliminator for iTunes at http://www.markelsoft.com It safely finds and removes duplicates and missing files from your iTunes Music Library. Has many features including UnDelete.