Why Google Takeout Exports Duplicate Photos (And How to Clean Up)

You downloaded your Google Photos via Takeout, and now you're staring at what looks like twice as many photos as you expected. Your 50GB library somehow became 90GB. Thanks Google, very generous with storage you were trying to free up.

The duplicates aren't a bug - they're a consequence of how Google exports your data. The good news: they're easy to clean up once you understand what's happening.

Why Google Exports Photos Twice

Google Photos organizes your library in two ways:

• Year-based folders ("Photos from 2020", "Photos from 2021") - every photo goes here automatically
• Albums - collections you created manually

When you export via Takeout, Google includes a photo in both locations. A photo from your "Vacation 2020" album gets exported twice: once in the album folder, once in "Photos from 2020".

If you have lots of albums, your export can be nearly double the size of your actual library.

What About Edited Photos?

If you edited photos in Google Photos (cropped, applied filters, etc.), those edits create separate files:

• The edited version gets an -EDIT suffix (e.g., IMG_1234-EDIT.jpg)
• By default, edited versions only appear in year-based folders, not in albums (though you can add them manually in Google Photos before exporting)
• The original unedited photo stays in both places

This means your year-based folders are the most complete collection - they have both originals and edits.

How to Clean Up Your Export

Step 1: Fix Your Metadata First

Before removing duplicates, restore the correct dates and locations to your photos. Once you delete the JSON files or scatter your photos across different folders, matching them back up becomes a nightmare.

Step 2: Choose Your Organization Strategy

Decide how you want your final library organized:

• Keep year-based folders only: Simplest approach. Delete the album folders entirely. Year folders have everything including edits.
• Keep albums only: If album organization matters to you. Just know you'll lose edited versions unless you manually added them to albums before exporting.
• Keep both but deduplicate: Use a deduplication tool that can find identical files across folders.

Step 3: Remove Duplicates

Once metadata is fixed, use any deduplication tool that compares files by hash (MD5, SHA-1, etc.). Since the files are byte-identical, these tools will find them reliably.

Popular options include dupeGuru (free, works on all platforms) or built-in features in photo management apps.

The Research: Are They Really Identical?

We wanted to know exactly what happens with duplicates in Google Takeout. Are the files truly identical? What about the metadata? Let's find out.

Test Setup

We created a test library with 17 photos in an album called "Summer Trip" that also appeared in the "Photos from 2020" year folder. We then:

• Added a description to one photo
• Starred/favorited another photo
• Cropped a third photo (creating an edit)
• Exported via Google Takeout
• Compared everything with MD5 hashes and field-by-field JSON analysis

Finding #1: Image Files Are Byte-Identical

All 17 photos that appeared in both folders had identical MD5 hashes. Not similar - identical. Pixel-for-pixel, byte-for-byte copies.

MATCH: IMG_6516.jpg (cf6bfe4aa68ed7c512aea46fed802f0c)
MATCH: IMG_6530.jpg (e29a4c1d87f053b6a91c72de4f08b537)
MATCH: IMG_6531.jpg (3b8a7e0f14d962c5a80bd1ef673c49a2)
... all 17 matched

Conclusion: You can safely delete either copy - the image data is identical.

Finding #2: Important Metadata Is Identical

The JSON sidecar files contain the same values for all the fields that matter:

Minor differences appear in non-critical fields: imageViews (tracked separately per location) and creationTime (when added to that folder, differs by seconds). These don't affect your photos.

Finding #3: Edited Photos Behave Differently

When we cropped a photo in Google Photos, here's what appeared in the export:

Photos from 2020/
├── IMG_6540.jpg           ← Original
├── IMG_6540.jpg.supplemental-metadata.json
├── IMG_6540-EDIT.jpg      ← Edited version (ONLY here)
├── IMG_6540-EDIT.jpg.supplemental-metadata.json

Summer Trip/
├── IMG_6540.jpg           ← Original only
├── IMG_6540.jpg.supplemental-metadata.json
                                    ← No edited version!

The edited file (with -EDIT suffix) only appears in the year folder. It has different dimensions (cropped) and file size, but the same photoTakenTime as the original.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Google Takeout export duplicate photos?

Google exports photos from both year-based folders and albums separately. A photo in an album and a year folder gets exported twice as separate identical files.

Are Google Takeout duplicate photos exactly identical?

Yes. We verified this by comparing MD5 hashes - the image files are byte-for-byte identical. The metadata JSON files also contain the same important information (dates, locations, descriptions) in both copies.

Where do edited photos appear in Google Takeout?

Edited photos (with -EDIT suffix) appear in year-based folders by default, not in albums. You can manually add them to albums in Google Photos before exporting if you want them included.

Should I keep album folders or year folders?

Year-based folders are more complete - they contain all photos including edited versions. Album folders preserve your organizational structure but may miss edits. Choose based on whether organization or completeness matters more to you.

What deduplication tools work with Google Takeout?

Any tool that compares files by hash (MD5, SHA-1) will work since the duplicates are byte-identical. dupeGuru is free and works on all platforms.