- How To Find Duplicate Files On Mac Free
- Free Duplicate Finder For Mac
- Find Duplicate Files Mac Free
- How To Find Duplicate Files On Mac Free Online
The dreaded “running low on storage” error message — we all hate it. When your Mac starts to run out of space, one of the most effective ways to clean it up is to find any duplicate files you can delete. Photos, videos, songs, email attachments, old documents — anything that's easy to download and forget about.
Duplicate files on your Mac are largely useless, and managing them is important. The more duplicate files there are on Mac, the less efficient it is because duplicates can affect Mac’s resources and performance.
Many users just don't think to find duplicate files on their Mac, much less delete duplicate files when they're aware of them. There are a few really good ways to remove duplicate files on your Mac; we'll show you the absolute best methods here.
Duplicate file finder for Mac
Get the best app to find and delete duplicate files and folders for keeping your Mac in shape. Best utilities in one pack, give it a go!
Verdict: Duplicate File Finder lets you get more free disk space by removing unnecessary identical or similar files and folders from your Mac. It works with a variety of file formats and has a really fast scanning algorithm to find matches. 7) Duplicate File Finder Remover for MAC. The free version of Duplicate File Finder removes duplicates from MAC computers, and on any disk or folder. The PRO version does not offer much more than most free file finders offer but it allows you to mass select duplicates for deletion etc.
Best ways to remove duplicates on your Mac
Having duplicate files on your Mac may not be your fault. There are times when you duplicate a file to alter it, but never get around to those changes. You may also import images you already have in your Photos app, or have multiple video or audio files lurking.
Sometimes, apps download multiple files or folders they need to operate properly. You can dig through your file system and manually delete files, but that's a tedious process.
Find duplicates manually
You can, of course, just go through every folder, hidden or not, and delete the files that you remember seeing somewhere else. But how long would that take you? Your files love to spread throughout multiple destinations, and some apps like iTunes or Photos keep their own libraries of your files, which are hard to get to.
Smart Folders can help. Your Mac lets you create Smart Folders inside Finder. These folders have automated actions to make finding file types easier.
Here's how to use Smart Folders on Mac:
- Open Finder
- From the menu bar, select “File”
- Select “New Smart Folder”
- In the finder window, choose “Kind”
- Next to “Kind,” select the file type you want to isolate for the smart folder
This is Apple's imperfect method; it can help you find all types of files, but there's no automation for duplicates in Smart Folders. If you have multiple versions of a presentation, for example, Smart Folders can help you find all of your presentations, no matter where they're stored on your Mac. You can delete them in the Smart Folder, too, and those files will be placed in Trash.
Photos
You can also use Smart Folders to find duplicate images. Simply choose Kind > Image > and the type of image you want to find a duplicate of.
How To Find Duplicate Files On Mac Free
Downloads
Finder has a search field that can be handy for finding duplicate files. To use it for your Downloads folder, open Finder, and make sure you have the “Downloads” folder selected from the menu on the left side of the window. In the search bar on the top right, enter the name of a file you want to find a duplicate of.
Mail downloads
Your mail downloads have a home on your Mac. Again, this is likely your downloads folder; to make sure, go to your mail app, select its name in the menu bar, and choose “Preferences.” In its preferences menu, it allows you to designate where you want your downloads to go.
All you have to do from there is search the folder your mail downloads go to for duplicate files as noted above.
How to find duplicate files with a Terminal command
Before you start using Terminal, know this: any changes you make to Terminal and not reversible, and could have lasting effects on your Mac. Be careful!
To find duplicate files on Mac using Terminal, follow these steps:
- Open Terminal on your Mac
- Use the cd command to change directories.
Note: If you have to change directories multiple times – say if you want to search a folder deeper in your file hierarchy – simply use the cd command multiple times until you reach your destination - Enter 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
- Press 'Enter' on your Mac keyboard
This creates a text file of all your duplicate files in the folder you're searching for – but doesn't delete them! You still have to go looking for those files.
Get rid of duplicate files and folders with duplicate files finders
Just as with most maintenance tasks, finding duplicates has been automated for quite some time now. Apps like Gemini and Disk Drill are excellent duplicate file finder apps, able to scan your computer and clear out the excess completely in minutes.
Gemini is beyond easy to use. It's able to swiftly inspect your Mac, sort all the results by type or date, and even find similar files beyond just duplicates.
When you launch the Gemini app, it will prompt you to add a folder to scan. This can be any folder on your Mac, including common folders like your Home folder, Pictures folder, and Music folder, where your iTunes library lives. You can also drag and drop folders onto the Gemini window.
After Gemini finishes the scan, it'll show you how many duplicates it found and recommend which ones to automatically delete. You can click the Smart Cleanup button to delete the files that Gemini suggests or click Review Results to see all the duplicate files and make your own decisions.
The Review Results window contains everything you need to decide, too. For each duplicate file, you can see where each version lives on your hard drive when it was last modified, how large the file is, and of course preview it. The sidebar also distinguishes exact duplicates from files that are just very similar. You can sort any list by size or file type, and then check the boxes for any files you are comfortable deleting.
To see everything you have selected for deletion so far (including the choices Gemini made on your behalf), just click the Selected section in the left-hand sidebar. And when you're finished making selections, just click the Smart Cleanup button in the bottom-right and that's it! Gemini deletes your duplicate files and you're all done.
Disk Drill has similar functionality, and some extra features. The tool can recover deleted files that haven't been overwritten yet, salvage files from a corrupted external hard drive or SD card, and check the health of your main hard drive. Pretty useful, we think.
When you launch the app, click the Find Duplicates feature in the toolbar and add a folder for the app to scan. Your Home folder is a good place to start.
After the scan, Disk Drill will show all the duplicate files it has found. You can click the arrow next to any to see all the locations on your hard drive where that file was found and choose the one to delete. You can click a little magnifying glass icon to open the file's location in the Finder or click the eyeball to preview the file with Quick Look.
The app doesn't automatically select any files to delete, but has a few handy features. The default view puts the largest files on top of the list, but you can re-sort that however, you like. If you select all versions of the same file to delete, Disk Drill highlights that file name in red as an extra visual warning that you're about to delete them all.
Once you've made all your selections, just click the Remove button at the top-right of the window, confirm that you're really deleting them, and, poof, they're gone.
Conclusion
Finding duplicate files on your Mac can be tedious without great apps. That's likely why your memory is filled with duplicate files. It's also why most of us don't bother finding the duplicates to delete!
Gemini and Disk Drill making finding duplicate files really simple. Both have awesome features, and make finding and deleting duplicate files a snap.
All these apps are also part of the Setapp collection. In fact, there are about 200+ more useful apps for your Mac. And with a free trial, you can try these tips and free up space on our dime.
Sometimes, Duplicate Files can take up an enormous amount of space in your Mac or merely just cause confusions and problems. It is not an easy task for finding them. Thus, Duplicate File Finder and remover apps are extremely popular. They search and comb through your Mac and find out the Duplicate Files that are present so that you can decide what to do with them. In this article, we will be discussing the Best Duplicate File Finder for Mac.
Contents
- 1 6 Best Duplicate File Finders for Mac
6 Best Duplicate File Finders for Mac
Here we have discussed the best Duplicate File Finder for Macbook. These easily help you deal with these files and free up space on your Mac. Most of these Apps will not online find but will also delete or remove duplicate files from your Mac device.
We will also briefly tell you about the applications and how to use them so that you can make an informed decision about the one you want. Let’s Begin!
1. Gemini 2
Even though it is paid, Gemini 2 is one of the fastest Duplicate File Finders available for Mac. You can preview the files before deleting them and easily manage them. Additionally, it supports more than 10 languages. At a price tag of 19.99$, it is definitely worth the price. However, we suggest you go for the free applications if you only want to use it for basic Duplicate File services. You can get your hands on Gemini 2 here.
2. MacClean
MacClean is a sophisticated application for mac. You can use it to remove duplicate documents, music, photos and tons of other duplicate files from your Mac easily. Known for its simple and easy to use interface, you can choose the folders that you want to be scanned. The application will scan them and find out the duplicate files. The application is also available in a variety of languages for your convenience. You can also filter content according to various parameters. We highly recommend this application as it will perfectly fit your needs. Get MacClean.
3. Easy Duplicate Finder
Easy Duplicate Finder is another beast of an application when it comes to removing Duplicate files from your Mac. It is hands down one of the fastest and most secure duplicate finder for Mac out there. You can easily manage your Photos, Music, and Videos with this application, along with organizing them. It has an intuitive interface laced with an extremely powerful search algorithm. It is able to look for true duplicates and not just files sharing the same name. You can also find duplicates in iTunes, iPhoto, and Photos. It also sports a range of Scan Modes.
Definitely worth trying, get Easy Duplicate Finder.
4. Disk Drill
Disk Drill is primarily a data recovery application for Mac, however, it’s powerful software also has a duplicate finder that is as good as stand-alone applications. You can scan the drives and the application will easily find the Duplicate Files for you. It supports a simple interface with a drag-and-drop design for your convenience. One of the best things about this application is that is very lightweight and does not occupy too much space on your Drive. You can easily select the locations that you want to scan. What makes this application extremely unique is, in case you accidentally an application by mistake, you can recover it with the application’s powerful Data Recovery system.
One of the best in the Duplicate Files game, get Disk Drill now.
5. Duplicate Files Fixer
Duplicate Files Fixer is another great Duplicate Files Finder and cleaner. All you have to do is enter a location and the application will find all the Duplicate Files for you. With an interactive and intuitive interface, this software lets you backup your files before you delete them, which makes dealing with Duplicate Files on your Mac an easy task. Get Duplicate Files Fixer here.
6. Cisdem Duplicate Finder
This powerful application lets you scan and remove Duplicate Files in easy steps. With powerful software, it will use more than just name, size, and extension of files to find the Duplicate files. True Duplicate files will be scanned by it, you can decide what to do with them, and delete them easily. You have different categories available for classifying the duplicate files including, Pictures, Music, Videos, and more.
Free Duplicate Finder For Mac
You can get Cisdem Duplicate Finder and easily manage Duplicate Files on your Macbook.
Top 6 Duplicate File Remover Software for Mac
Here is a list of the Best Duplicate File Finder and Remover for your Mac that we have mentioned above:
- Gemini 2
- MacClean
- Easy Duplicate Finder
- Disk Drill
- Duplicate Files Fixer
- Cisdem Duplicate Finder
Besides these, there are many alternatives that you can try out. Some of them are are Duplicate Detective, Dupe Guru for Mac, and so on.
Find Duplicate Files Mac Free
Final Take
We hope that by reading the above articles you were able to go through the 6 best Duplicate File Finders that are available for Mac, and were able to use them without any problems. These Software are powerful and pretty all of them have simple interfaces. You can pick any of them randomly or make an informed decision, your purpose will be served. If you have any further queries regarding any of the Duplicate File Finders mentioned above, you can drop us a comment below and we will do our best to get back to you with a relevant answer.