It’s a good habit to always keep things with a copy. Before editing a file or an image on Mac, many people press Command + D to duplicate the file and then make revisions to the copy. However, as the duplicated files mount up, it can disturb you because it makes your Mac short of storage or literally in a mess. So, this post aims to help you out of this trouble and guides you to find and remove duplicate files on Mac.
See also:
Why Do You Have Duplicate Files on Mac?
Before taking action to remove duplicate files, let’s go through some common situations in which you are likely to have accumulated numbers of duplicate files:
You always make a copy before you edit a file or an image, but do not delete the original one even if you no longer need it.
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You move a patch of images into your Mac and view them with the Photos app. Actually, these photos have two copies: one is in the folder that they are moved into, and the other is in the Photos Library.
You usually preview the email attachments before downloading the files. However, once you open an attachment, the Mail app has automatically downloaded a copy of the file. So you get two copies of the attachment if you manually download the file.
You download a photo or file twice without noticing it. There will be "(1)" in the file name of the duplicate.
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You have moved some files to a new location or an external drive but forgot to delete the original copies.
As you see, things often happen that you have got multiple duplicate files on your Mac. In order to get rid of them, you have to take some methods.
Fastest and Automatic Way to Find and Delete Duplicate Files on Mac
If you already suffer from duplicate files on your Mac, you may want to solve the problem as quickly as possible. So in the first place, we would recommend you to use a reliable duplicate file finder for Mac to finish this job, for example, Macube Cleaner. It can help you locate and remove duplicate photos, songs, documents, and other files on your Mac in simple clicks, and will immensely save you time. It’s totally safe and easy to use. Look at the following steps to get a grip on how to use it.
Step 1. Free Download Macube Cleaner
Step 2. Launch Macube Cleaner to Find Duplicate Files
On the main interface, you can see the System Status of your Mac clearly. On the left column, you can choose the data types to clean, such as large & old files and uninstallers. Select Duplicate Finder to find and clean duplicate items on Mac.
Step 3. Start Scanning Duplicate Files on Mac
After selecting Duplicate Finder from the left sidebar, Macube Cleaner supports users to scan specific folders, so click Choose Path and select the desired folder to open. Then, click the Scan tab to get started.
Step 4. Preview and Remove Duplicate Files
When the scanning process completes, all the duplicate files will be listed on the interface and are classified into categories.
Click the small triangle beside each duplicate file to preview the duplicate items. Choose the duplicate files you want to delete and hit Clean to delete them. A lot of space must be freed up!
Note:
You can preview the photos, videos, songs, etc. beforehand to avoid mistaken deletion. Because the duplicate files are mostly identified by names, double check before removing them is always recommended.
Manual Ways to Find and Remove Duplicate Files on Mac
1. Find and Remove Duplicate Files on Mac with Smart Folder
Using the Mac's built-in features to locate and remove duplicate files is also an available way, though it will cost a bit more time. One of the ways is to create smart folders to find duplicate files and clear them up.
What’s A Smart Folder?
The Smart Folder on Mac is not a folder but a search result on your Mac that can be saved. With this function, you can sort out the files on Mac by setting up filters like file type, name, last opened date, etc., so that you can easily access and manage the files you have found.
Steps to Find and Remove Duplicate Files with Smart Folder
Now that you learn how the Smart Folder on Mac works, let’s create one to locate and remove duplicate files.
Step 1. Open Finder, and then click File > New Smart Folder.
Step 2. Hit the “+” at the top right corner to create a new Smart Folder.
Step 3. Set up filters to categorize the possible duplicate files.
At the drop-down menu below “Search”, you can enter different conditions to sort out your files.
For example, if you want to access all the PDF files on your Mac, you can select “Kind” for the first condition and “PDF” for the second one.
Or you want to get all the files that contain the same keyword, for example, macube. This time you can select “Name”, choose “contains” and finally enter “macube” to get the results.
Step 4. Arrange the files by Name and then delete the duplicate ones.
As you have got the search results, you can now hit “Save” at the right top corner to save the Smart Folder and begin to tidy up the files.
Because the duplicate files are usually named the same as the original ones, you can right-click to arrange the files by their names to find and remove the duplicates.
2. Find and Remove Duplicate Files on Mac with Terminal
Another way to manually find and get rid of duplicate files on Mac is to use Terminal. By using the Terminal command, you can detect duplicate files more quickly than searching one by one by yourself. However, this method is NOT for those who have barely used Terminal before, for it might mess up your Mac OS X/macOS if you enter the wrong command.
Now, follow the steps below to know how to find duplicate files on Mac:
Step 1. Open Finder and type terminal to bring out the Terminal tool.
Step 2. Choose a folder that you would like to clean duplicates and locate the folder with cd command in Terminal.
For example, to search duplicate files in Downloads folder, you can type: cd ~/Downloads and click Enter.
Step 3. Copy the following command in Terminal and hit Enter.
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
Step 4. A txt. file named duplicate will be created in the folder that you have chosen, which lists out duplicate files in the folder. You can find and delete the duplicates manually according to the txt. file.
Noted that there are also some downsides:
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Searching duplicate files with Terminal in Mac is not totally accurate. Some duplicate files cannot be found by the terminal command.
With the search result provided by Terminal, you still need to manually locate the duplicate files and delete them one by one. It is still not clever enough.
How to Find and Delete Duplicates in Photos on Mac
If your Mac is running a newer macOS like Sonoma, you can use the inbuilt Duplicate Finder in Photos to easily find and delete duplicate images or videos.
Step 1. Run the Photos app on your Mac and choose Duplicates in the left pane.
Step 2. Choose the duplicate photos or videos you want to merge and click Merge [Number] Duplicates. Once done, one original duplicate will be left on your photo library while the others are moved to the Recently Deleted album. You can delete duplicates from the Recently Deleted album to permanently remove them.
How to Check and Remove Duplicates in Music on Mac
Just like the Photos app, the Music app on Mac comes with built-in options to find duplicate songs. Here is how to use such convenience functions.
Step 1. Open the Music app on your Mac and select Songs from the sidebar.
Step 2. Click the song you want to check whether it has duplicates. Then press the Option key on your keyword while clicking File in the top menu and choose Library > Show Exact Duplicate Items. Check the duplicate music and move the unwanted ones to Trash.
How to Locate and Delete Duplicate Mail Downloads on Mac
When you open an attachment in Mail, the attachment is downloaded in local actually. At this time, if you save the attachment, duplicates are generated. However, it's not difficult to find Mail downloads and you can follow the steps below to locate and remove them.
Step 1. Launch Finder on your Mac and click Go > Go to Folder.
Step 2. Input: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail Downloads in the Go to box and press Return.
Step 3. Clear the unneeded files in the shown Mail Downloads folder.
Conclusion
Above we have provided three ways for finding and removing duplicate files on Mac. Let’s review them once:
Method 1 is to use Macube Cleaner, a third-party tool to automatically locate and clean up duplicate files. The advantage of it is that it can cover all kinds of duplicates, is easy to use, and time-saving.
Method 2 is to create Smart Folders on your Mac. It’s official and can be a great way to manage the files on your Mac. But it requires more time, and you may leave out some duplicate files because you have to sort them out by yourself.
Method 3 is to use Terminal Demand on Mac. It’s also official and free, but is hard to use for many people. Also, you need to manually identify the duplicate files and delete them.
Besides, we have also shared you how to find and delete duplicates of specific apps like Photos, Music and Mail. Considering the usage, Macube Cleaner is the best recommendation that can accurately find and delete all kinds of duplicates from your Mac, but each one is a viable way and you can choose according to your needs.
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