Git and version control systems are fundamentally designed to track file changes over time, not to manage duplicate files. While Git identifies identical file contents across different versions or branches by storing them only once, this is an internal optimization—not a duplicate management feature. Traditional duplicate file handlers focus on identifying and removing redundant copies across a filesystem, whereas Git's deduplication operates within its repository for efficiency, not as a user-facing tool for organizing files.

In practice, this means Git automatically optimizes storage for exact copies committed in different branches (e.g., multiple branches containing the same logo image). However, it won’t help you locate or merge duplicate drafts like report_v1.docx and report_final.docx saved separately in the same folder. Development teams benefit from Git’s content handling for code duplicates, while document-heavy fields like technical writing rely on manual cleanup or dedicated deduplication tools.

The main advantage is reduced repository size without user intervention. A key limitation is that Git’s deduplication works only for committed identical files within the repo—it ignores similar-but-changed files, untracked files, or files outside the repository. For deliberate duplicate management like media libraries, specialized tools remain essential.