Will the Camera Uploads feature recognize duplicate photos from multiple devices?

[Jeff K.28]

Will camera upload recognize duplicate photos when uploading from iPad and iPhone?

[Walter]

Hi there @Jeff K.28 - thanks for using Dropbox and posting on our Community!

Note that the automatic camera upload feature uploads all photos and videos from the "Camera" and "Screenshots" albums on your device(s). 

When you say duplicate photos, can you please clarify if those would be exact copies of the same files with the same names as well or a different copy of the files that's saved on both of your devices?

Thanks!

[Jeff K.28]

Thanks for replying. What I’m concerned about is that the photos on my phone’s photo library and the same photos in my iPad photo library will create many duplicates in the camera upload files.

[Hannah]

Hey @Jeff K.28, are these the exact same photos, with the exact same names and sizes? Size is pretty important.

[Jeff K.28]

Yes. Same photos. Synced by ICloud but downloaded to phone and iPad

[Nancy]

Hi @Jeff K.28, hope it’s OK to jump in.

If the exact same photos are saved on both your devices, then camera uploads will recognize the duplicates, and not upload them twice to your Dropbox account. However, if you’ve edited any of these photos on your iOS devices, after downloading them, then both the original and updated copy will be saved to Dropbox instead. 

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

[Jeff K.28]

Thank you for clearing that up. Can you answer another question? If a photo has been saved to different folder than camera uploads in Dropbox if that photo is deleted from camera uploads will it still remain in the other folder?

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jeff K.28, files aren't connected to each other on Dropbox. So, if you delete a file in the camera uploads folder, this won't affect any other files located elsewhere on your account.