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Duplicate Devices

What it does

Duplicate Devices scans your Intune-managed device fleet and flags devices that are actually the same physical hardware enrolled more than once. This commonly happens after a device is re-imaged, re-enrolled, or renamed — Intune ends up with two (or more) managed device records that both belong to one laptop or phone.

Detection is based on hardware identity, not the device name — a device can be renamed at any point without breaking detection. Devices are grouped together when they share the same:

  • Serial number

  • Wi-Fi MAC address

Placeholder or blank values (for example a virtual machine's default serial number, or an all-zero MAC address) are ignored so they don't get lumped together as false duplicates.

How to use it

  1. Navigate to Devices > Duplicate Devices in the sidebar.

  2. Click Scan for Duplicates to run the scan across your device fleet.

  3. Devices that were matched to another device are tagged Duplicate in the list. Use the Show duplicates only toggle to hide everything else.

  4. Click View Duplicates on a tagged device to open its duplicate group — a side-by-side view of every device that matched.

  5. From the group view, click the trash icon next to a device to remove it.

Removing a device deletes its record from both Intune and Entra ID. This cannot be undone — make sure you're removing the stale duplicate, not the device that's actually still in use.

What you'll see

The scan shows three summary numbers: total devices scanned, how many are duplicates, and how many duplicate groups were found.

Each duplicate device is tagged with a Duplicate badge and a Matched On indicator showing whether it was grouped by serial number, Wi-Fi MAC address, or both. Opening a group shows every device in it with its compliance state, last sync time, serial number, and Wi-Fi MAC address, so you can tell which one to keep before removing the others.

Requirements

Scanning and viewing duplicate devices is available to any active IntuneAssistant customer — no additional license is required.

Removing a duplicate device requires the Configuration Management module, since it's a write-side action that deletes data from your tenant. If your account doesn't have this module, the remove button is disabled and you can still see the full duplicate group.

Common questions and tips

Why isn't a device I know is duplicated showing up? Detection relies on the device reporting a serial number or Wi-Fi MAC address to Intune. Devices without either — or with only a placeholder value — can't be matched and won't be flagged, even if they're the same hardware.

Why is a device grouped with others that don't look related? Matching is based purely on serial number and Wi-Fi MAC address, not device name. If two seemingly unrelated device names share a group, it usually means the same physical machine was re-enrolled under a different name.

What exactly happens when I remove a device? The device's managed device record is deleted from Intune, and its corresponding device object is deleted from Entra ID. If you only want to stop seeing a device without deleting anything, don't use this feature — retire or wipe it from the regular Intune device actions instead.

Do I need to rescan after removing a duplicate? No — the list and any open duplicate group update automatically after a removal.

Related Pages

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