With JavaScript 1.6 / ECMAScript 5 you can use the native filter method of an Array in the following way to get an array with unique values:

function onlyUnique(value, index, self) {
  return self.indexOf(value) === index;
}

// usage example:
var a = ['a', 1, 'a', 2, '1'];
var unique = a.filter(onlyUnique);

console.log(unique); // ['a', 1, 2, '1']

The native method filter will loop through the array and leave only those entries that pass the given callback function onlyUnique.

onlyUnique checks, if the given value is the first occurring. If not, it must be a duplicate and will not be copied.

This solution works without any extra library like jQuery or prototype.js.

It works for arrays with mixed value types too.

For old Browsers (<ie9), that do not support the native methods filter and indexOf you can find work arounds in the MDN documentation for filter and indexOf.

If you want to keep the last occurrence of a value, simply replace indexOf with lastIndexOf.

With ES6 this can be shorten to:

// usage example:
var myArray = ['a', 1, 'a', 2, '1'];
var unique = myArray.filter((v, i, a) => a.indexOf(v) === i);

console.log(unique); // unique is ['a', 1, 2, '1']

Thanks to Camilo Martin for hint in comment.

ES6 has a native object Set to store unique values. To get an array with unique values you could now do this:

var myArray = ['a', 1, 'a', 2, '1'];

let unique = [...new Set(myArray)];

console.log(unique); // unique is ['a', 1, 2, '1']

The constructor of Set takes an iterable object, like an Array, and the spread operator ... transform the set back into an Array. Thanks to Lukas Liese for hint in comment.

Updated answer for ES6/ES2015: Using the Set and the spread operator (thanks le-m), the single line solution is:

let uniqueItems = [...new Set(items)]

Which returns

[4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 23, 1]

I split all answers to 4 possible solutions:

1. Use object { } to prevent duplicates
2. Use helper array [ ]
3. Use filter + indexOf
4. Bonus! ES6 Sets method.

Here's sample codes found in answers:

Use object { } to prevent duplicates

function uniqueArray1( ar ) {
  var j = {};

  ar.forEach( function(v) {
    j[v+ '::' + typeof v] = v;
  });

  return Object.keys(j).map(function(v){
    return j[v];
  });
} 

Use helper array [ ]

function uniqueArray2(arr) {
    var a = [];
    for (var i=0, l=arr.length; i<l; i++)
        if (a.indexOf(arr[i]) === -1 && arr[i] !== '')
            a.push(arr[i]);
    return a;
}

Use filter + indexOf

function uniqueArray3(a) {
  function onlyUnique(value, index, self) { 
      return self.indexOf(value) === index;
  }

  // usage
  var unique = a.filter( onlyUnique ); // returns ['a', 1, 2, '1']

  return unique;
}

Use ES6 [...new Set(a)]

function uniqueArray4(a) {
  return [...new Set(a)];
}

And I wondered which one is faster. I've made sample Google Sheet to test functions. Note: ECMA 6 is not avaliable in Google Sheets, so I can't test it.

Here's the result of tests:

I expected to see that code using object { } will win because it uses hash. So I'm glad that tests showed the best results for this algorithm in Chrome and IE. Thanks to @rab for the code.

Update 2020

Google Script enabled ES6 Engine. Now I tested the last code with Sets and it appeared faster than the object method.

You can also use underscore.js.

console.log(_.uniq([1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4]));

<script src="http://underscorejs.org/underscore-min.js"></script>

which will return:

[1, 2, 3, 4]

One Liner, Pure JavaScript

With ES6 syntax

list = list.filter((x, i, a) => a.indexOf(x) == i)

x --> item in array
i --> index of item
a --> array reference, (in this case "list")

With ES5 syntax

list = list.filter(function (x, i, a) { 
    return a.indexOf(x) == i; 
});

Browser Compatibility: IE9+

Many of the answers here may not be useful to beginners. If de-duping an array is difficult, will they really know about the prototype chain, or even jQuery?

In modern browsers, a clean and simple solution is to store data in a Set, which is designed to be a list of unique values.

const cars = ['Volvo', 'Jeep', 'Volvo', 'Lincoln', 'Lincoln', 'Ford'];
const uniqueCars = Array.from(new Set(cars));
console.log(uniqueCars);

The Array.from is useful to convert the Set back to an Array so that you have easy access to all of the awesome methods (features) that arrays have. There are also other ways of doing the same thing. But you may not need Array.from at all, as Sets have plenty of useful features like forEach.

If you need to support old Internet Explorer, and thus cannot use Set, then a simple technique is to copy items over to a new array while checking beforehand if they are already in the new array.

// Create a list of cars, with duplicates.
var cars = ['Volvo', 'Jeep', 'Volvo', 'Lincoln', 'Lincoln', 'Ford'];
// Create a list of unique cars, to put a car in if we haven't already.
var uniqueCars = [];

// Go through each car, one at a time.
cars.forEach(function (car) {
    // The code within the following block runs only if the
    // current car does NOT exist in the uniqueCars list
    // - a.k.a. prevent duplicates
    if (uniqueCars.indexOf(car) === -1) {
        // Since we now know we haven't seen this car before,
        // copy it to the end of the uniqueCars list.
        uniqueCars.push(car);
    }
});

To make this instantly reusable, let's put it in a function.

function deduplicate(data) {
    if (data.length > 0) {
        var result = [];

        data.forEach(function (elem) {
            if (result.indexOf(elem) === -1) {
                result.push(elem);
            }
        });

        return result;
    }
}

So to get rid of the duplicates, we would now do this.

var uniqueCars = deduplicate(cars);

The deduplicate(cars) part becomes the thing we named result when the function completes.

Just pass it the name of any array you like.

Using ES6 new Set

var array = [3,7,5,3,2,5,2,7];
var unique_array = [...new Set(array)];
console.log(unique_array);    // output = [3,7,5,2]

Using For Loop

var array = [3,7,5,3,2,5,2,7];

for(var i=0;i<array.length;i++) {
    for(var j=i+1;j<array.length;j++) {
        if(array[i]===array[j]) {
            array.splice(j,1);
        }
    }
}
console.log(array); // output = [3,7,5,2]

I have since found a nice method that uses jQuery

arr = $.grep(arr, function(v, k){
    return $.inArray(v ,arr) === k;
});

Note: This code was pulled from Paul Irish's duck punching post - I forgot to give credit :P

Remove duplicates using Set.

// Array with duplicates
const withDuplicates = [2, 2, 5, 5, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3];
// Get new array without duplicates by using Set
// [2, 5, 1, 3]
const withoutDuplicates = Array.from(new Set(arrayWithDuplicates));

A shorter version, as follows:

const withoutDuplicates = [...new Set(arrayWithDuplicates)];

The simplest, and fastest (in Chrome) way of doing this:

Array.prototype.unique = function() {
    var a = [];
    for (var i=0, l=this.length; i<l; i++)
        if (a.indexOf(this[i]) === -1)
            a.push(this[i]);
    return a;
}

Simply goes through every item in the array, tests if that item is already in the list, and if it's not, pushes to the array that gets returned.

According to JSBench, this function is the fastest of the ones I could find anywhere - feel free to add your own though.

The non-prototype version:

function uniques(arr) {
    var a = [];
    for (var i=0, l=arr.length; i<l; i++)
        if (a.indexOf(arr[i]) === -1 && arr[i] !== '')
            a.push(arr[i]);
    return a;
}

Sorting

When also needing to sort the array, the following is the fastest:

Array.prototype.sortUnique = function() {
    this.sort();
    var last_i;
    for (var i=0;i<this.length;i++)
        if ((last_i = this.lastIndexOf(this[i])) !== i)
            this.splice(i+1, last_i-i);
    return this;
}

or non-prototype:

function sortUnique(arr) {
    arr.sort();
    var last_i;
    for (var i=0;i<arr.length;i++)
        if ((last_i = arr.lastIndexOf(arr[i])) !== i)
            arr.splice(i+1, last_i-i);
    return arr;
}

This is also faster than the above method in most non-Chrome browsers.

We can do this using ES6 sets:

var duplicatesArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4];
var uniqueArray = [...new Set(duplicatesArray)];

console.log(uniqueArray); // [1,2,3,4,5]

Magic

a.filter(e=>!(t[e]=e in t)) 

O(n) performance (is faster than new Set); we assume your array is in a and t={}. Explanation here (+Jeppe impr.)

let t, unique= a=> ( t={}, a.filter(e=>!(t[e]=e in t)) );

// "stand-alone" version working with global t:
// a1.filter((t={},e=>!(t[e]=e in t)));

// Test data
let a1 = [5,6,0,4,9,2,3,5,0,3,4,1,5,4,9];
let a2 = [[2, 17], [2, 17], [2, 17], [1, 12], [5, 9], [1, 12], [6, 2], [1, 12]];
let a3 = ['Mike', 'Adam','Matt', 'Nancy', 'Adam', 'Jenny', 'Nancy', 'Carl'];

// Results
console.log(JSON.stringify( unique(a1) ))
console.log(JSON.stringify( unique(a2) ))
console.log(JSON.stringify( unique(a3) ))

["Defects", "Total", "Days", "City", "Defects"].reduce(function(prev, cur) {
  return (prev.indexOf(cur) < 0) ? prev.concat([cur]) : prev;
 }, []);

[0,1,2,0,3,2,1,5].reduce(function(prev, cur) {
  return (prev.indexOf(cur) < 0) ? prev.concat([cur]) : prev;
 }, []);

This prototype getUnique is not totally correct, because if i have a Array like: ["1",1,2,3,4,1,"foo"] it will return ["1","2","3","4"] and "1" is string and 1 is a integer; they are different.

Here is a correct solution:

Array.prototype.unique = function(a){
    return function(){ return this.filter(a) }
}(function(a,b,c){ return c.indexOf(a,b+1) < 0 });

using:

var foo;
foo = ["1",1,2,3,4,1,"foo"];
foo.unique();

The above will produce ["1",2,3,4,1,"foo"].

You can simlply use the built-in functions Array.prototype.filter() and Array.prototype.indexOf()

array.filter((x, y) => array.indexOf(x) == y)

var arr = [1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 6, 9];

var newarr = arr.filter((x, y) => arr.indexOf(x) == y);

console.log(newarr);

After looking into all the 90+ answers here, I saw there is room for one more:

Array.includes has a very handy second-parameter: "fromIndex", so by using it, every iteration of the filter callback method will search the array, starting from [current index] + 1 which guarantees not to include currently filtered item in the lookup and also saves time.

Note - this solution does not retain the order, as it removed duplicated items from left to right, but it wins the Set trick if the Array is a collection of Objects.

//                               
var list = [0,1,2,2,3,'a','b',4,5,2,'a']

console.log( 
  list.filter((v,i) => !list.includes(v,i+1))
)

// [0,1,3,"b",4,5,2,"a"]

Explanation:

For example, lets assume the filter function is currently iterating at index 2) and the value at that index happens to be 2. The section of the array that is then scanned for duplicates (includes method) is everything after index 2 (i+1):

                               
[0, 1, 2,   2 ,3 ,'a', 'b', 4, 5, 2, 'a']
          |---------------------------|

And since the currently filtered item's value 2 is included in the rest of the array, it will be filtered out, because of the leading exclamation mark which negates the filter rule.

If order is important, use this method:

//                               
var list = [0,1,2,2,3,'a','b',4,5,2,'a']

console.log( 
  // Initialize with empty array and fill with non-duplicates
  list.reduce((acc, v) => (!acc.includes(v) && acc.push(v), acc), [])
)

// [0,1,2,3,"a","b",4,5]

[...new Set(duplicates)]

This is the simplest one and referenced from MDN Web Docs.

const numbers = [2,3,4,4,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,5,32,3,4,5]
console.log([...new Set(numbers)]) // [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 32]

This has been answered a lot, but it didn't address my particular need.

Many answers are like this:

a.filter((item, pos, self) => self.indexOf(item) === pos);

But this doesn't work for arrays of complex objects.

Say we have an array like this:

const a = [
 { age: 4, name: 'fluffy' },
 { age: 5, name: 'spot' },
 { age: 2, name: 'fluffy' },
 { age: 3, name: 'toby' },
];

If we want the objects with unique names, we should use array.prototype.findIndex instead of array.prototype.indexOf:

a.filter((item, pos, self) => self.findIndex(v => v.name === item.name) === pos);

Array.prototype.getUnique = function() {
    var o = {}, a = []
    for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) o[this[i]] = 1
    for (var e in o) a.push(e)
    return a
}

Without extending Array.prototype (it is said to be a bad practice) or using jquery/underscore, you can simply filter the array.

By keeping last occurrence:

    function arrayLastUnique(array) {
        return array.filter(function (a, b, c) {
            // keeps last occurrence
            return c.indexOf(a, b + 1) < 0;
        });
    },

or first occurrence:

    function arrayFirstUnique(array) {
        return array.filter(function (a, b, c) {
            // keeps first occurrence
            return c.indexOf(a) === b;
        });
    },

Well, it's only javascript ECMAScript 5+, which means only IE9+, but it's nice for a development in native HTML/JS (Windows Store App, Firefox OS, Sencha, Phonegap, Titanium, ...).

That's because 0 is a falsy value in JavaScript.

this[i] will be falsy if the value of the array is 0 or any other falsy value.

If you're using Prototype framework there is no need to do 'for' loops, you can use http://prototypejs.org/doc/latest/language/Array/prototype/uniq/ like this:

var a = Array.uniq();  

Which will produce a duplicate array with no duplicates. I came across your question searching a method to count distinct array records so after uniq() I used size() and there was my simple result. p.s. Sorry if i mistyped something

edit: if you want to escape undefined records you may want to add compact() before, like this:

var a = Array.compact().uniq();  

Now using sets you can remove duplicates and convert them back to the array.

var names = ["Mike","Matt","Nancy", "Matt","Adam","Jenny","Nancy","Carl"];

console.log([...new Set(names)])

Another solution is to use sort & filter

var names = ["Mike","Matt","Nancy", "Matt","Adam","Jenny","Nancy","Carl"];
var namesSorted = names.sort();
const result = namesSorted.filter((e, i) => namesSorted[i] != namesSorted[i+1]);
console.log(result);

I had a slightly different problem where I needed to remove objects with duplicate id properties from an array. this worked.

let objArr = [{
  id: '123'
}, {
  id: '123'
}, {
  id: '456'
}];

objArr = objArr.reduce((acc, cur) => [
  ...acc.filter((obj) => obj.id !== cur.id), cur
], []);

console.log(objArr);

If you're okay with extra dependencies, or you already have one of the libraries in your codebase, you can remove duplicates from an array in place using LoDash (or Underscore).

Usage

If you don't have it in your codebase already, install it using npm:

npm install lodash

Then use it as follows:

import _ from 'lodash';
let idArray = _.uniq ([
    1,
    2,
    3,
    3,
    3
]);
console.dir(idArray);

Out:

[ 1, 2, 3 ]

I'm not sure why Gabriel Silveira wrote the function that way but a simpler form that works for me just as well and without the minification is:

Array.prototype.unique = function() {
  return this.filter(function(value, index, array) {
    return array.indexOf(value, index + 1) < 0;
  });
};

or in CoffeeScript:

Array.prototype.unique = ->
  this.filter( (value, index, array) ->
    array.indexOf(value, index + 1) < 0
  )

Finding unique Array values in simple method

function arrUnique(a){
  var t = [];
  for(var x = 0; x < a.length; x++){
    if(t.indexOf(a[x]) == -1)t.push(a[x]);
  }
  return t;
}
arrUnique([1,4,2,7,1,5,9,2,4,7,2]) // [1, 4, 2, 7, 5, 9]

It appears we have lost Rafael's answer, which stood as the accepted answer for a few years. This was (at least in 2017) the best-performing solution if you don't have a mixed-type array:

Array.prototype.getUnique = function(){
    var u = {}, a = [];
    for (var i = 0, l = this.length; i < l; ++i) {
        if (u.hasOwnProperty(this[i])) {
            continue;
        }
        a.push(this[i]);
        u[this[i]] = 1;
    }
return a;
}

If you do have a mixed-type array, you can serialize the hash key:

Array.prototype.getUnique = function() {
    var hash = {}, result = [], key; 
    for ( var i = 0, l = this.length; i < l; ++i ) {
        key = JSON.stringify(this[i]);
        if ( !hash.hasOwnProperty(key) ) {
            hash[key] = true;
            result.push(this[i]);
        }
    }
    return result;
}

strange this hasn't been suggested before.. to remove duplicates by object key (id below) in an array you can do something like this:

const uniqArray = array.filter((obj, idx, arr) => (
  arr.findIndex((o) => o.id === obj.id) === idx
)) 

For an object-based array with some unique id's, I have a simple solution through which you can sort in linear complexity

function getUniqueArr(arr){
    const mapObj = {};
    arr.forEach(a => { 
       mapObj[a.id] = a
    })
    return Object.values(mapObj);
}