Alternatives
Looking for a PhotoSweeper alternative?
PhotoSweeper is a good piece of software with about a decade of refinement behind it, and for a Mac photographer whose pictures live inside Apple Photos it is hard to beat. Here is what Skimrr does differently, and when you should stay exactly where you are.
What PhotoSweeper does well
It reads catalogues, not just folders
Apple Photos and Lightroom libraries are opened directly, with no export step. If your photographs live inside a catalogue rather than in folders on disk, that alone can settle the question.
Many matching modes, finely controlled
Bitmap, histogram, EXIF date, filename and more, with rules deciding which copy survives. Someone who wants to steer the matching itself has more room here.
Years of edge cases already met
A tool that has been sold to photographers for that long has run into libraries yours will resemble. That is worth something no feature list shows.
Where Skimrr is different
It runs on Windows too
One licence covers up to three machines across macOS and Windows. PhotoSweeper is Mac only, so a mixed household or a studio with both needs two answers.
Every removal is reversible in one click
Discarded photographs go to a local trash inside Skimrr, browsable, and put back file by file into their exact original folder. Nothing is permanently deleted until you empty it yourself.
Free to scan and review, with no clock
You can scan a folder, look at every group and inspect every photograph without paying and without a countdown. A licence is needed only to move files.
Side by side
| PhotoSweeper | Skimrr | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS | macOS and Windows |
| Price | One-time | One-time, $19.99 |
| Reads Apple Photos library | Yes | No, folders only |
| Runs locally | Yes | Yes |
| Reversible removals | Partial | Yes, internal trash |
| Open source | No | No |
Checked against each maker's own site. Prices and features change: tell us at [email protected] if a line here has gone stale.
Stay with PhotoSweeper if
your photographs live inside Apple Photos or a Lightroom catalogue. Skimrr works on files in folders and will not open a catalogue, so switching would mean exporting first, which is a worse workflow than the one you already have. Stay too if you are Mac only and want to control the matching mode yourself: that control is real and Skimrr does not offer it.
Questions
- Can Skimrr read my Apple Photos library?
- No. It scans folders and their subfolders, and it deliberately skips the Photos library package rather than pretending to understand it. If that is where your pictures are, PhotoSweeper is the better tool.
- Does Skimrr find rotated or cropped duplicates?
- Not yet. Its fingerprint survives resizing, recompression and exposure changes, but a rotated copy reads as a different photograph. This is a known gap, not an oversight.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and there is nothing clever about it: they are separate applications reading the same files. Neither installs a service or modifies your library.