Cross-platform duplicate photo finder
PhotoMaster is a local-first photo deduplication and similarity cleanup tool. Inspired by PhotoSweeper, it uses Apple Vision for feature extraction and vDSP for high-dimensional cosine similarity clustering.
How It Works
- Scan — PhotoMaster reads your photo library (or a folder on macOS) using PhotoKit or FileManager.
- Extract — Each image is hashed perceptually using Vision's feature print.
- Cluster — vDSP cosine similarity groups near-duplicates together in real time.
- Review — Side-by-side comparison shows you every cluster so you can decide what to keep.
- Delete — Remove confirmed duplicates. Nothing leaves your device.
Why PhotoMaster
- Local-first — No cloud uploads. All processing happens on your Mac/iPhone.
- Cross-platform — Single Swift codebase runs on macOS 14+ and iOS 17+.
- Fast — Actor-based async pipeline handles 50,000+ photos without blocking the main thread.
- Smart clustering — Catches both exact duplicates and near-similar shots (e.g., burst mode).
- Privacy — Requires only Photos library permission. No analytics, no tracking.
Technical Highlights
- Swift 6.0 with strict concurrency (actors, AsyncStream)
- SwiftPM multi-package architecture (5 products, 5 targets, 3 test targets)
- SwiftData for caching feature vectors
- 24 unit tests covering scanning, clustering, and thumbnail pipelines