How To Delete Duplicate Files On Mac For Free

/Duplicate Finder /The Best Way to Remove Duplicate Files on Mac

How To Delete Duplicate Files On Mac For Free Online
Find Duplicate Files On Mac
Clean Duplicate Files Mac
How To Delete Duplicate Files On Mac For Free Without

Are you one of those people who is having issues with memory on your Mac? Then by now, you’ve heard of duplicate file finder Mac programs or apps that can help you out. Duplicate files tend to take up some unwanted space, space that could be used for many other things and doing it one by one can be difficult unless you are super organized.

In this article, we will discuss with you how you can get rid of those pesky duplicate files and get that much-needed space back into your Mac.

Let Gemini delete the duplicate files on its own. But for files you do care, click on the triangle icon next to the file name in the middle pane. This will reveal a drop down menu that will list the path of the all matched duplicate files. Click on all the other versions of the file and you’ll see a preview in the right.

Article GuidePart 1. Why Do I Have These Duplicate Files on Mac?Part 2. Find Duplicate Files and Remove Them by Manual SearchPart 3: Find duplicate music and video files in iTunes libraryPart 4: The easiest way to remove these duplicate files

Note: In order to remove, all the duplicate files you will have to buy the license for iBeesoft Duplicate File Finder otherwise in the trial version it only removes 20 duplicate files. Delete Duplicate Word Files Manually. In the first method, we were using software to remove duplicate files but here we will tell you how you can have.
CloneSpy is a Free Duplicate File CleanUp Tool for Windows. CloneSpy can help you free up hard drive space by detecting and removing duplicate files. Duplicate files have exactly the same contents regardless of their name, date, time and location. Also, CloneSpy is able to find files that are not exactly identical, but have the same file name.

Part 1. Why Do I Have These Duplicate Files on Mac?

As we tend to use our Mac more and more, we forget that we already have certain files in folders that we placed here and there. Again, unless you have a super compulsive need to keep your files orderly from day one to day however long, it is likely you have several files that have duplicates maybe even hundreds.

Let’s not forget about when you migrated from an older Mac to a newer model, you likely grabbed everything you could and placed it in the new shiny hard drive but soon forgot to place it in order. At this point, you are likely a little too far along to figure things out and need help from a duplicate file finder for your Mac.

So now let's see how you can delete these duplicate files.

Part 2. Find Duplicate Files and Remove Them by Manual Search

This one is the free option but it is work intensive and can take quite a long time depending on many files you have on your Mac.

This also makes it a bit difficult as you are prone to human error plus fatigue. Imagine going through thousands upon thousands of files and figuring out which one is a duplicate file and having to move it to another folder and all that?

It’s a lot of work but is likely not the most viable or ideal among all the options, however, it is free so if you’re a little tight in the wallet, better roll up those sleeves and become your own duplicate file finder Mac app on your very own.

Part 3. Find Duplicate Music and Video Files in iTunes Library

Now before you start to think this is your best option, please note this usually only works for files that are friendly to iTunes like music, videos and much more, all the other files, unfortunately, you are on your own.

For this one all you have to do is simply click on the “View” button of iTunes and scroll down to the “Show Duplicate Items” and you can start scanning through it.

It is a great way to view everything but again it is limited to the files only in your iTunes which might not be everything but it’s a great fix for someone in desperate need of finding space in his or her Mac and still isn’t sure about finding the right duplicate file finder Mac program that they want to use yet.

Part 4. The Easiest Way to Remove All Duplicate Files

iMyMac PowerMyMac is a third party program that can definitely help you find those elusive duplicate files and has a great duplicate file finder Mac application that will definitely help you sort everything out.

It’s a pretty easy program to use and although it isn’t free, it could help you get that space that you’ve been craving for. The best part is that the program is quite friendly and makes it a breeze to get all the duplicate files lined up for you.

Here are the steps on how you can use iMyMac PowerMyMac to help you hunt down those duplicate files in your Mac.

Step 1. Launch iMyMac PowerMyMac on Your Mac

Start by downloading iMyMac PowerMyMac from the website and install it into your Mac. Ideally, you aren’t doing anything else or using the Mac for any other needs so that it can install properly. When it is done, kindly launch the PowerMyMac program and you will be brought to a new window.

There are a number of programs that might be of interest to you, however, the one that should be catching your attention is “Duplicate Finder”.

When you press the “Duplicate Finder” option, the main window will then send you to another screen and you will notice the “Scan” button right at the bottom, please press it in order to proceed.

Step 2. Start Scanning Duplicate Files on Your Mac

PowerMyMac will start scanning through your Mac and will take a bit of time. It highly depends on how many files you have on your Mac but it shouldn’t be too long. Please make sure not to have any other duplicate file finder Mac programs or applications running otherwise they could interfere with each other.

Additionally please allow the program to finish the scan, do not close the program or shut down the Mac in the middle of the process.

When the scan finishes you will then be able to view all the duplicate files, such as the documents, images, videos and much more. PowerMyMac will also show you how many files are duplicates and more.

Step 3. Select Duplicate Files to Delete

From here you can click on the duplicate files and even inspect them. When you are done choosing simply tick the files that you want to remove and when you are sure you chose all the right ones, click the “Clean” button on the bottom right and you are done with finding all the duplicate files in your Mac.

Assuming everything went according to plan, you should now be rid of any duplicate files that were occupying your Mac’s much-needed memory. Download macos catalina offline installer.

From here it’s a matter of finding what options best works for you and your Mac, after all, it’s not every day that you find a duplicate file finder method that meets your needs.

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Why is my Mac duplicating files?

There are a ton of reasons your Mac could be loaded with duplicate files. Maybe you’ve imported the same photos from your camera multiple times and didn’t realize it. Or you couldn’t find a file you were sent, so you just re-downloaded it. Duplicates are a normal part of using a computer, which is why you should regularly check and clean your Mac for duplicate files.

How to find duplicate files on Mac

Over time your Mac is going to fill up and run out of storage space. And most likely, duplicates that take up a good amount of your valuable space. Sure, you can try to sort through all of your files, searching for those duplicate documents, photos, and music files. But if your hard drive is already full, that means you’ve got a lot of files to sift through. And it’s going to take you a very long time to go through them one-by-one.
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1. Delete duplicate files with Gemini 2

There are a ton of duplicate finder tools out there, but we’ll take Gemini 2 as an example, because we’re 100% sure it works. Once you have Gemini 2 downloaded and installed, just follow these steps to scan all of the folders on your Mac:

Download, install and open Gemini 2.
Click the + > Choose Customer Folder..
Then, select your hard drive. Unless you’ve renamed it, it’s called Macintosh HD.
Click Scan for Duplicates.

When the scan is over (which doesn’t take long), you get two options: Review Results and Smart Cleanup.

Smart Cleanup means you’ll automatically delete all of the files Gemini 2 thinks are duplicates, leaving the originals in place. While Review Results will allow you to do exactly what it suggests. You’ll be able to see all of your files and select which ones you want to delete.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Gemini 2 will delete duplicate files in your Photos, Downloads, Mail Downloads, iTunes, and all the other locations on your disk. It’s by far, the easiest and fastest way to find and delete all of the duplicates on your Mac.

2. Find duplicate files with a Terminal

Before you jump into Terminal headfirst, you should only do it if you're comfortable and know your way around Terminal. It’s a powerful tool that can mess up a lot if you don’t know what you’re doing. We’ve tested the steps below and nothing bad happened, but you should still be careful and double check everything you type into the command line.

So, here’s how you search for duplicate files with Terminal:

In Finder, go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal to open it.
Navigate to the folder you want to scan with the cd command. For example, if you want to scan Downloads, type in cd ~/Downloads and hit Enter.
Copy and paste this command:

find . -size 20 ! -type d -exec cksum {} ; | sort | tee /tmp/f.tmp | cut -f 1,2 -d ‘ ‘ | uniq -d | grep -hif – /tmp/f.tmp > duplicates.txt and hit Enter.

This will create a text file in the folder you’ve specified, with a list of your duplicates inside. But, there are two things you should keep in mind:

This terminal command overlooks a lot of duplicates.
You’ll still need to locate those duplicate files and sift through them to separate the copies from the originals.

So, this command is more like a crystal ball: it gives you hints, but you still have to go and do the sorting and deleting manually. Which brings us to another option, that will do a little more of the work for you.

Sometimes files won’t be flagged as duplicates because they have slightly different file names. But every file has what’s called an md5 hash, which is a unique identifier that stays with the file. So even if you move or rename a file, it’s md5 hash will remain the same.

Similar to the Terminal command above, you can generate a list that shows the md5 tag to verify all of the duplicates in a particular folder. Follow the steps below to create that list.

Open Terminal from the Utilities folder.
For this example, we’ll scan the Documents folder. Type into the Terminal window: ~/Documents.
Copy and paste this code: find ./ -type f -exec md5 {} ; | awk -F '=' '{print $2 't' $1}' | sort | tee duplicates.txt and then hit enter.
Then, open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.
Open the Documents.txt file.

This generates a list of all of the files in the folder you’ve specified, but you’ll at least be able to see the md5 tags to know which files are copies of each other.

3. Find duplicate files on Mac using Smart folders

The truth is duplicate files can live anywhere on your hard drive, which makes finding them that much trickier. But thanks to a feature in Finder called Smart Folders, you can narrow your search down based on specific criteria. Say you want to search all of the documents on your Mac, then you’d follow these steps:

In a new Finder window, click File > New Smart Folder and make sure This Mac is selected.
In the top-right corner, click +.
From the first drop-down menu, select Kind and in the second drop-down, choose Documents. Then, click Save.
A pop-up window will come up, letting you name the folder and choose where to save the Smart Folder.
From there, you can see all of your documents. Click to order the files by either name, size, or date created to help you quickly spot duplicates.
Select the files you want to delete.
Right-click (or hold down Command and click) and then click Move to Trash.

How to locate duplicate files using Smart Folders

While using Smart Folders is a lot faster than hunting through your entire hard drive for duplicate files, it still requires a bit of patience. Manually going through each of your files one-by-one can take some time, even after you’ve narrowed them down.

4. Find duplicate pictures in your Photos library

You move a bunch of new photos onto your Mac, import them into Photos, and start sorting them out. What you probably don’t know is that all of those pics now exist in two copies: one in the initial folder (say, Documents), and one in Home > Pictures > Photos Library. So, the best thing to do is to use the import features in either iPhoto or Photos.

Now, how do you find these duplicate photos and get rid of them? Depends on how much you rely on Photos for viewing and organizing your pics. If you never liked the app anyway and have backups of all pics in other folders, just go ahead and empty the Photos library. Remember two things here, though:

Delete your pics in Photos only when you’re 100% sure you have copies of them in another folder.
When you delete duplicate files in Photos, they are not removed — just moved to a Recently Deleted folder. Meaning they’re still taking up storage space. So, don’t forget to empty your Recently Deleted folder too.

Find similar photos in Photos

If you are using Photos to store and organize your pictures, keep in mind that it only displays files stored in Home > Pictures > Photos Library. So, if your pics are duplicated, you’ll have to remove the copies that are stored elsewhere. Here’s how you can find them:

In Photos, open the Photos tab to see all your pics sorted by date.
In Finder, open All My Files to view all your pics in bulk, not in a dozen individual folders.
Sort the files by Date Created, so that your pics in Finder are listed more or less in the order they’re listed in Photos.
Now comes the tedious part. Take a group of pics in Photos, created within the same day — say, April 17, 2015. Go to Finder, spot the 2015 section, and find that identical group of pics (they will be located together, so you just need to look carefully).

Repeat step 4 for all the pictures you have in your Photos library. That way, you’ll find and remove the duplicate photos that are stored in other locations, and keep only the pics in your Photos library.

You’ll quickly see how long it will take you to find and delete your photos manually. But if you used an app like Gemini 2, it can do most of the heavy lifting for you. Plus, you’re able to review all of the duplicates Gemini finds or just delete them all with one click. The best part is you can download Gemini 2 for free and see how it works.

5. How to find duplicates in Mail Downloads

Here’s a common scenario: a colleague emails you a document, and you open the attachment in Mail to take a look at it. You’re going to need this file, so you download it onto your Mac for safe keeping. No duplicates, nothing to talk about here. Right?

Not exactly. See, the Mail app has quietly downloaded this attachment the moment you opened it, and stashed it in its very own downloads folder. So, now you have two copies of the same file on your Mac.

The Mail Downloads folder is not particularly easy to find. You really have to know where to look to get to it. Follow these steps to access it:

Open Finder.
In the Menu bar, click Go > Go to Folder…
Type this address:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads and hit Go.

This will open a new Finder window where all of your Mail attachments live. The good news here is that there’s nothing to compare or sort. These files are automatically downloaded to make it faster to open the next time you need them. But all the attachments still live on your email server and can be re-downloaded at any time. Meaning, if there’s nothing you would miss, you could empty this entire folder.

How to find duplicate files in specific folders

You can also use Smart Folders to look for duplicates within specific folders. This is particularly helpful in instances when you have multiple folders in a folder. To set up a Smart Folder that searches a specific folder:

Go to the folder you want to search in Finder and click File > New Smart Folder.
In the Search bar at the top of the window, click the folder name.
Click + in the top-right corner.
Set your other search criteria and click Save.
Then, name your Smart Folder and choose where to save it.
Organize your files by name, size, or date created to help you see the duplicates.
Select the files you want to delete and drag them to your Trash.

How to find duplicates of specific file types

Because you set the search criteria with each Smart Folder, that means you can search for specific types of files or files of a certain size. To create a Smart Folder for a certain type of file, like pictures, you can open a new Finder window and follow these steps:

Click File > New Smart Folder.
Then, in the top-right corner, click +.
From the first drop-down menu, select Kind.
Choose Image from the second drop-down.
Click Save.
Then, give your Smart Folder a name and choose where you want to save it.
After it’s saved, you can select the duplicate files, right-click or command-click, and click Move to Trash.

How to find duplicates by file sizes

How To Delete Duplicate Files On Mac For Free Online

If you want to only search for files by their size, which is particularly helpful to get rid of larger duplicates, do the following:

Open a Finder window.
In the top right, click +.
Click on the first drop-down to choose File Size. If you don’t see it, click Other… and then search for size, to add it to the menu.
Set your file size criteria.
Then you can click Save, name your folder and choose where it’s saved.
Once your Smart Folder is created, you can select the duplicates, right-click or command-click, and then click Move to Trash.

Find Duplicate Files On Mac

While Smart Folders are extremely helpful in finding and deleting duplicates on your Mac, it still requires you do a lot of it manually. Which leaves room for error and not to mention how much time it will take you to remove files one at a time.

Clean Duplicate Files Mac

The alternative to deleting duplicates manually is to use an app Gemini 2. It quickly scans your entire hard drive or individual folders, presenting you with the duplicate files to review. Or you can even choose to use the Smart Cleanup feature, which will automatically delete duplicates and leave the original files in their place.

How To Delete Duplicate Files On Mac For Free Without

Hopefully, this article helps you clean up your Mac and remove those sneaky duplicate files that are eating up all of your storage space.