When you use Mac, you might experience the problem of duplicate photos. These can creep into the system without you knowing about it. This might have when you download the same photo several times. These photos might occupy a lot of the space over time. So, if you want to find and remove the duplicate photos on Mac, here are a few ways you can follow.
- Finding and Deleting Photos Manually
Your Photos Library is on external or remote storage. Currently, Duplicate File Finder can not scan pictures in those locations, but But this issue will be solved with the next software update. However, you can transfer the Photos Library onto your Mac, where Duplicate File Finder can scan it. Jan 19, 2020 To go to the folder that holds your OS X Mail messages: Open a new Finder window or click on the desktop of your Mac. Select Go in the menu bar and Go to Folder from the menu. You can also press Command Shift G to open this window. If you're running macOS Mojave, type /Library/Mail/V6.
This is a time-consuming process. However, the good thing about this process is that you will be able to go through the photos and find out if they are actual duplicates or just different snap of the same item that is taken one after another, to check the photos manually.
- Open one Finder window and go to Users, Pictures, and then Photo Library. Here, the images are stored by default.
- Sort your files by Name and choose the viewing that will enable you to check the file.
- Select the duplicate photos and right click on your mouse to choose the option Move to Trash. When you are done, go to Recently Deleted File and remove the photos from there.
- Repeat the above steps for the folders where you might have saved the images.
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This might take a few hours. Thus, a majority of the Mac users avoid deleting the duplicate photos.
- Find and Remove with CleanGeeker App
CleanGeeker app has some powerful algorithm which will help you to scan and then identify the duplicate photos. This app has a clean interface and will clean up the Mac in minutes. Its built-in algorithm can find the duplicate photos within no time, irrespective where it is placed. One of the best things about this is that once you delete the photos, it isn’t recoverable since it is not to be found in the memory anymore. Hence, you can free up a lot of space.
- Download the app and install it on the Mac. Open the app and you will get many options on the sidebar.
- On the home page, you will find Duplicate Clean on the left side. It will scan the computer and display the duplicate images. When you choose a certain folder will lead the duplicates in that location to be chosen. Keep in mind that the original folder is not going to be checked.
- Review the duplicate the check the boxes needed and click on Delete to remove the files.
With this app, you can delete the photos with one click.
This post has been updated on August 17, 2018
Duplicate files are one of the reasons that you run out of storage on your iMac or MacBook. You may wonder:
Why are my Mac duplicating files?
Well, there are multiple possibilities:
When you move a patch of images into your Mac and view them with Photos app, these photos have two copies: one in the folder that they are moved into, the others are in Photos Library.
We 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.
You have moved some files to an external drive but forget to delete the original copies.
You can manually find out duplicate files on Mac OS X. However, just think of the time and effort it takes to sort out thousands of duplicates from folder to folder! There must be better ways to find and remove duplicate files all at once.
Here we will introduce to you two easy ways to find duplicate photos, documents, music or video files in your Mac OS X: using Terminal or using duplicate files finder for Mac. You can get tons of free space on your Mac in a few clicks.
Method 1: Find Duplicate Files on Mac with Terminal Command
By using Terminal command, you can detect duplicate files more quickly. However, this method is NOT for those have barely used Terminal before. It might mess up your Mac OS X/macOS if you enter the wrong command. Now, you can follow the steps below to find duplicate files on Mac manually:
Step 1. Open Finder and type terminal to bring out 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.
But the downsides are:
Searching duplicate files with Terminal in Mac is not accurate. Some duplicate files can be found by 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.
Above is how to remove duplicate files on Mac for free. But if you want to find and remove duplicate files on your Mac all at once, you need the help of a well-designed duplicate files cleaner for Mac. Please check it out in method 2 below!
Method 2: Easily Search and Remove Duplicates with A Duplicate Finder
FonePaw MacMaster is one of the best Mac duplicate finders that you can find. Its Duplicate Finder feature can scan all your Mac folders such as Downloads, Documents, Desktop and detect all duplicate photos, music, apps, documents, videos and more in one click. Besides, you can delete the repeated files with this duplicate file remover.
The MacMaster duplicate finder is much smarter than you thought:
It can detect duplicate files not only by their same name, but also by their size, created date, file type. Therefore, it won't miss out those duplicates with “(1)', “(2)' in the file name.
It allows you to preview photos, documents so that you won't delete useful files by mistake. Many people are asking for a best photo duplicate finder on Mac, the FonePaw MacMaster can be your best choice.
Better than Gemini, Dupeguru, MacMaster is an all-in-one Mac cleaner that can uninstall apps, clear system caches, junks and more.
To check and clean duplicate file on Mac in one click:
Step 1. Install FonePaw MacMaster on your Mac. It works with macOs 10.14/10.13/10.12 Sierra, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan,Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, 10.9 Mavericks and more.
Step 2. Run the application and choose Duplicate Finder.
Step 3. Click Change Path to open a desired folder and clickScan to check all duplicate files on your Mac. It could take several minutes if there are many files.
Step 4. When the scanning is completed, all duplicates are displayed. You can click the categories on the top side and view the files by photos, music or others. Also, choosing Sort By, you can arrange the files by name, size, date, etc. For example, it works as a duplicate photo finder when you can select 'Images' to check the results.
Step 5. Tick all the duplicate files you want to remove, click Clean to delete them in one click.
Duplicate Library Folders On Mac Windows 10
It is no doubt that MacMaster is a better choice than Terminal. It can find all the duplicate files and remove extra copies in one click while Terminal is only suitable to techies, and more importantly, it fails to find out all duplicates. So why not download the duplicate files finder app and have a try? If you have any problem when trying to delete duplicate files on hard drive, just leave us a message on the comment box below!
Remove Duplicate Files Mac Free
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