Help & FAQ

PicSweep is a Chrome browser extension that helps you find and clean up duplicate, near-duplicate, and blurry photos in your Google Photos and iCloud Photos libraries. It uses advanced perceptual hashing (pHash) and blur detection algorithms to identify similar images, allowing you to review and delete them in bulk.

1. Visit the Chrome Web Store
2. Click "Add to Chrome"
3. Confirm the permissions prompt
4. Navigate to photos.google.com for Google Photos or icloud.com/photos for iCloud Photos
5. Click the PicSweep extension icon in your browser toolbar
6. Click "Open PicSweep Panel" to start scanning

You need to sign in to use PicSweep. For Google Photos, sign in with your Google account. For iCloud Photos, sign in with your Apple ID using Apple Sign-In. Sign-in is required to access your photo library through secure OAuth and to manage your usage quota.

PicSweep currently supports two platforms:

• Google Photos — Sign in with Google and scan photos on photos.google.com
• iCloud Photos — Sign in with Apple and scan photos on icloud.com/photos

All features — duplicate detection, blur detection, side-by-side comparison, and batch selection — work on both platforms. The only platform-specific difference is the custom date range scan, which is available on Google Photos only.

PicSweep uses a technique called perceptual hashing (pHash). Unlike exact file comparison, pHash generates a fingerprint based on the visual content of an image. This fingerprint generation happens locally inside your browser to protect your privacy. These lightweight, anonymous fingerprints are then grouped by similarity on our secure backend, matching photos with a Hamming distance below your selected threshold. Your actual photos never leave your device.

PicSweep analyzes each photo using Tenengrad and Canny edge detection algorithms to calculate a sharpness score. Photos scoring below the blur threshold are flagged as potentially blurry. This helps you identify out-of-focus shots that you might want to remove from your library.

No, never. PicSweep only identifies and suggests photos that might be duplicates or blurry. You always have the final say. Every photo marked for deletion must be explicitly confirmed by you. For Google Photos, deleted photos go to your Trash first, where they remain for 60 days before permanent deletion. For iCloud Photos, deleted photos go to the Recently Deleted album, where they remain for up to 30 days before permanent deletion.

By default, PicSweep uses a "best quality" strategy: it recommends keeping the photo with the highest resolution, best sharpness score, and largest file size. You can override this and manually select which photo to keep in each group.

Yes, iCloud Photos has a few platform-specific limitations:

• Custom date range scanning is Google Photos only; iCloud Photos exposes Quick Check, Recommended, and Full Library only.
• iCloud Photos does not expose the exact upload timestamp per photo, so within a single iCloud month section PicSweep uses DOM-adjacency heuristics to keep similar photos grouped.
• iCloud Photos does not have an "Include Starred" option — starred photos are treated like any other photo.

All core features work the same way on both platforms.

Absolutely not. Your photos never leave your device. All image scanning, processing, and hashing (generating visual fingerprints) happen entirely inside your browser. The only data sent to our secure servers are the lightweight, anonymous mathematical hashes so they can be grouped by similarity. Your actual images are never transmitted, stored, or accessed. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

For Google Photos, PicSweep uses Google Sign-In and requests the scopes: email and profile. For iCloud Photos, PicSweep uses Apple Sign-In. In both cases, we cannot directly modify, delete, or share your photos through these scopes — PicSweep only automates the same UI actions you would perform yourself.

The free tier includes 500 photo hash operations per day and up to 20 photo deletions per day, and works identically on both Google Photos and iCloud Photos. This is enough to scan and compare approximately 500 photos daily. All core features are available: duplicate detection, blur detection, side-by-side comparison, and batch selection.

The Monthly Pass is a one-time payment ($4.99) that unlocks limitless scans and deletions for 30 days on both Google Photos and iCloud Photos. It's perfect if you have a large library to clean up once and don't want a recurring subscription. It does not auto-renew.

Premium is available as a Monthly or Yearly subscription. It unlocks:

• Limitless everything — no daily or monthly caps
• Advanced similarity tuning — adjust thresholds for finer control
• Priority support — get help within 24 hours
• Lifetime access to data (with Yearly) — your scan history is preserved

You can upgrade from the extension panel or from the Pricing section on our website. Payments are securely processed through Polar.sh. Once your payment is confirmed, your account is instantly upgraded and the limits are removed.

This could happen if:

• Your photos are genuinely unique (no duplicates exist)
• The similarity threshold is set too low — try increasing it in the extension settings
• The scan hasn't finished yet — larger libraries take more time

If the issue persists, try refreshing the photo page (Google Photos or iCloud Photos) and running the scan again.

Free-tier users are limited to 500 photo hash operations per day, shared across both Google Photos and iCloud Photos. Your quota resets at midnight UTC. If you need more, consider upgrading to Premium for unlimited usage.