How To Find Duplicate Files On Mac Free

A new Mac application called Gemini is looking to get some of your hard drive space back. By identifying duplicate files and folders on your Mac, Gemini helps you delete unnecessary clutter you didn’t even know you had.

Get more free disk space by removing unnecessary duplicate files and folders from your Mac. Remove duplicate files on any mounted disk or folder. Use Duplicate File Finder FREE to find and remove duplicate files. Get the PRO version to delete duplicate folders, merge similar folders, mass select duplicates and more. Get more free disk space by removing unnecessary duplicate files and folders from your Mac. Remove duplicate files on any mounted disk or folder. Use Duplicate File Finder FREE to find and remove duplicate files. Get the PRO version to delete duplicate folders, merge similar folders, mass select duplicates and more. There are several ways to find and delete duplicate files in Mac OS X: Use a third-party application. Manually using Finder. Removing duplicates songs from iTunes. Use a Terminal command or script. ITunes also has the ability to find duplicate items, which is covered later in this tutorial. Easy Duplicate Finder Mac Portable + Torrent Free Download. This software can find and remove duplicate files in seconds. With this tool, you can recover gigabytes of space. Using this software, you can speed up your computer and organize your files. Now, managing duplicate files with Easy Duplicate Finder on your PC or Mac is fast, easy and fun. Duplicate Cleaner Free. Duplicate Cleaner by DigitalVolcano Software is the leading program for finding and removing duplicate files on your Windows PC. Documents, pictures, music and more - this app will find it all. This free version has a subset of features found in it's big brother, Duplicate Cleaner Pro.

It’s surprising how often we make copies of files and folders on our computers only to let them sit and go unnoticed for years at a time. Then when our hard drives start to get dangerously close to full capacity, we frantically go searching for data we can purge in order to free up some space. Gemini is a new application that aims to take care of this problem for us. It’s a duplicate file and folder finder that can scan your Mac’s hard drive, removable media, and network volumes – pretty much anything you can mount in Finder. Developed by MacPaw, the makers of CleanMyMac, Gemini is available exclusively on the Mac App Store ($9.99) for systems running 10.7 Lion.

How it works

Gemini is not a multi-purpose application – it serves one purpose and stays focused on that task. The result is an extremely simple and intuitive interface for finding duplicate files and folders on your Mac. To get started, all you have to do is drag & drop a folder from Finder right into the Gemini window. It will take a few moments to analyze the folder depending on its size, but this is generally a quick process.

When the scan is done and you click through to the results, a 3-column window is displayed. The left column shows a breakdown of files types (such as Pictures, Documents, Movies, etc.) along with a graph that illustrates how much space each one is using. You can filter the list of results in the middle column by selecting a file or folder type. Each duplicated file is displayed with an indicator of how many copies were found and their combined file size. When you click one, the right column shows a preview of the file, where each instance is located on your Mac, and the modified date.

To remove files or folders, just check the box next to each of them. This adds them to a queue, so nothing really happens until you click the red “Remove Selected” button at the top. Once you click, it confirms exactly what will be removed and warns you so you don’t accidentally delete all copies of a file. When you give the final command to get rid of the listed items, it “shreds” them and moves them to the Trash. You’ll have to empty the Trash to get rid of those files for good.

Impressions & Notes

Gemini works really well and helps focus your attention on what’s taking up the most unnecessary space on your Mac. It makes what used to be a laborious task much more efficient. Best of all, I saved over 5GB in my Documents folder alone!

A big selling point for Gemini is the “Auto Select All Files” function, which uses an intelligent algorithm to decide which files to remove. While this may sound like a huge time saver, leaving your data to an algorithm’s judgement can be risky. When it comes to deleting your data, only you know what is safe to remove and what isn’t. My personal recommendation is to use Gemini as a helpful duplicate discovery tool, not an automated cleaner.

Overall, Gemini is a handy utility with an easy to understand interface. It’s very good at what it does and will certainly benefit any Mac user who is looking to clean up the clutter and regain hard drive space. Gemini is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99.

Win a free copy of Gemini for Mac!

The developers of Gemini have been kind enough to offer free software licenses to TWO (2) lucky MacYourself readers! In fact, the giveaway is open to any Twitter user! To enter, simply follow @macpaw and @macyourself on Twitter, then tweet this message:

@macyourself @macpaw I want to win a free copy of #GeminiApp for Mac! http://bit.ly/xWWGGK

All entries must be made by February 24, 2012 at 11:59pm eastern U.S. time. At the end, we’ll gather all of your tweets and pick two winners at random! The lucky guys or girls will be announced on this page, so save this article’s URL and be sure to check back later. In the meantime, check out Gemini on the Mac App Store to learn more about how it works. Good luck!

UPDATE – February 25, 2012:
Congratulations to our winners, @tashanzac and @marcoutsider! Their tweets were randomly selected and they have each been given a free copy of Gemini for Mac! Thanks to everyone who entered and remember to consider purchasing a copy of Gemini on the Mac App Store.

1 Open a SolidWorks File
2 Hide Files on a Thumb Drive So That They Can't Be Seen
3 Scan and Clean Computers and Remove Fragments With Microsoft
4 Set Exclusions in Norton Antivirus

Intelligently select duplicate files automatically, and you can choose to remove the newest or oldest files. Check the duplicate files with different categories, sort the duplicates by size, name, count, and type and search file by keywords.

Windows 8's built-in search function is pretty good at finding individual files and all the other files that share the same name. However, it does not do a good job of clearly flagging identical files, and doesn't sport a feature that only returns duplicate files and makes them easy to clean up. You can instead use a third-party duplicate file scanning program to find identical files on an external hard drive without having to search through folders.

Using Auslogics Duplicate File Finder

3: CloneSensor; CloneSensor is a very different duplicate file finder with a view to organizing the collections of files.It has ultra fast searching speed with optimized algorithm and provides many batch processing commands to find and delete duplicate files.
Select Files to Remove: If this doesn’t give you enough info, click the magnifying glass button beneath a duplicate to open its folder in Finder, to help you determine which version, or versions.

Download, install and run Auslogics Duplicate File Finder (link in Resources).

Put a check mark next to the external hard drive on the Disk Drives tree list. You can also put a check mark next to any other hard drives you want to compare files with.

Click the 'Look for all file types' radio button to search for all files, or select the 'Look for these file types only' option, and then select the individual file types if you're looking for media and program duplicates.

Click 'Search' and wait for the process to complete.

Check the box next to any file you want to delete from the list of sorted duplicate files.

Click 'Delete Selected Files' to send duplicate files to the recycling bin.

Using Duplicate Cleaner Free

Download, install and run Duplicate Cleaner Free (link in Resources).

Select the external hard drive from the Available Folders tree list, and then click the arrow to add it to the search area. You can also add any other hard drives or folders at this step.

Click the 'Scan Now' button and wait for the scan to complete.

Click on the 'Duplicate Files' tab to see the duplicate files listed and grouped together.

Check the box next to any files you want to delete, and then click the 'File Removal' button.

Check the button next to 'Delete to Recycle Bin,' click 'Delete Files,' and then select 'Yes' at the prompt window to remove duplicate files.

Using Fast Duplicate File Finder

Download, install and run Fast Duplicate File Finder (link in Resources).

Freddie mac cash for keys program. Check the external hard drive on the Browser For Folders tree list. You can also select any other hard drives you want to compare files with. Click 'OK.'

Click 'Start Scan' and wait for the scan to finish.

Check the box next to any files you want to delete from the duplicates listing, and then click the 'Delete Checked Files' button to delete duplicates.

Tips

Duplicate files can amass a large amount of space on a hard drive, so removing them is a good way to free up space.
Duplicate file finding programs can scan multiple drives at once, letting you eliminate duplicate files that exist on separate drives.
All three of the example programs let you move duplicate files to a different location as opposed to deleting them. You can use this functionality to double-check the files before deleting them.

Delete Duplicate Files On Mac

Resources (3)

Check For Duplicate Files On Computer

About the Author

Dan Stone started writing professionally in 2006, specializing in education, technology and music. He is a web developer for a communications company and previously worked in television. Stone received a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and a Master of Arts in communication studies from Northern Illinois University.

Photo Credits

Siri Stafford/Digital Vision/Getty Images

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Stone, Dan. 'How to Find Duplicate Files on an External Hard Drive Without Searching Folders.' Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/duplicate-files-external-hard-drive-searching-folders-69868.html. Accessed 06 September 2019.

How to find duplicate files on mac free app

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Duplicate files are a waste of disk space, consuming that precious SSD space on a modern Mac and cluttering your Time Machine backups. Remove them to free up space on your Mac.

There are many polished Mac apps for this — but they’re mostly paid software. Those shiny apps in the Mac app store will probably work well, but we have some good options if you don’t want to whip out your credit card.

Gemini and Other Paid Apps

Mac Duplicate File Finder

If you do want to spend money on a duplicate-file-finder app, Gemini looks like one of the best options with the slickest interfaces. The trial version worked well for us, and the interface certainly stands out from barebones, free applications like dupeGuru. Gemini can also scan your iTunes and iPhoto library for duplicates. If you’re willing to pay $10 for a better interface, Gemini seems like a good bet.

There are other, similarly polished duplicate-file-finders in the Mac App Store, too — but Apple flags this one as an Editors’ Choice, and we can see why.

As a bonus, the demo version of Gemini allows you to search for and find duplicates, but not remove them. So, if you really wanted, you could use the demo to find duplicates on your Mac, locate them in Finder, and then remove them by hand. Other paid duplicate-file-finder apps have demos that function in a similar way, so this may be convenient if you just want to run an occasional scan and you don’t mind deleting a handful of duplicates by hand.

There are many good-quality, paid duplicate-file-finding apps for Mac. You can find them with a quick trip to the Mac App Store.

dupeGuru, dupeGuru Music Edition, and dupeGuru Pictures Edition

RELATED:10 Ways To Free Up Disk Space on Your Mac Hard Drive

We also recommended dupeGuru for finding duplicate files on Windows. This application is both open-source and cross-platform. It’s simple to use — open the application, add one or more folders to scan, and click Scan. You’ll see a list of duplicate files, and you can select them and easily move them to the Trash or another folder. You can also preview them, verifying that they actually are duplicates before tossing them away.

/mac-change-program-default-for-file-type/. dupeGuru is available in three different flavors — a standard edition, an edition designed for finding duplicate music files, and an edition designed for finding duplicate pictures. These tools won’t just find exact duplicates, but should find the same songs encoded at different bitrates and the same picture resized, rotated, or edited.

This application is utilitarian, but it does its job well. You don’t get the shiny interface that you do with the paid Mac apps, but it’s a good free tool for finding and clearing duplicate files. If you want a free application for finding and removing duplicate files on a Mac, this is the one to use.

iTunes

iTunes has a built-in feature that can find duplicate music and video files in your iTunes library. It won’t help with other types of files or media files not in iTunes, but it can be a quick way to free up some space if you have a big media library with duplicate files.

To use this feature, open iTunes, click the View menu, and select Show Duplicate Items. You can also hold the Option key on your keyboard and then click the Show Exact Duplicate Items link. This will only show duplicates with the same exact name, artist, and album.

Find Duplicate Files Mac Free

After you click this, iTunes will show you a sorted list of duplicates next to each other. You can go through the list and delete any duplicates from your computer if they actually are duplicates you want to delete. When you’re done, click View > Show All Items to get back to the default list of media.