Duplicate files on your mac can be seen as wasted hard disk space on your Mac and it may bring you a day when you will find your disc space almost full. So, it is harmless to remove duplicate files any day. But the question is where you can find duplicate files and how you can delete them without losing any important data. Before proceeding further to get answer for this intelligent question we should know that from where exactly these duplicate files come from. In this article we will talk about the duplicate files on your Mac and how you can get rid of them manually.
Why there are duplicate files on your Mac:
Without any delay let us proceed further to find that what generates duplicate files on Mac.
- Duplicated files are the result of the same file downloaded or shared multiple times.
- Maybe you have copied burst photos on your Mac.
- Same photos with different effects.
- Same files are copied to multiple locations.
In all the situations it is not easy to search and get rid of these files. Here are two methods to find and clear duplicate files from your Mac.
- Finding duplicate files Manually:
- As I have told earlier the process of finding duplicates manually is not that simple. Anyway, let us start the process.
- Open Finder Window on your Mac.
- Go to Apple Menu>File>New Smart Folder.
- On the top right corner, you will see a + button click on it and select search Parameters.
- You can choose any kind of files in which you want to look for duplicates. For instance, if you want to look for duplicate photos then chose image, if you want to look for duplicate videos then go for movie.
- Once you are done with the selection you will find all the files of the same type. Further you can sort these files with size or name to get closer to the duplicates.
- Now you can preview files and can delete duplicate files one by one.
The method is time taking and includes a lot of human effort.
There is another method which can help you to search for duplicate songs or videos which are the most space occupying files types. Here it is.
Removing duplicate files using iTunes:
iTunes is the place from where you download songs, videos and other stuff on your Mac so iTunes can better tell you that which songs or videos are duplicate.
- To remove duplicate files with the help of iTunes Open iTunes on your Mac.
- Select songs, albums videos or any attributes in which you want to find duplicates. Once you are done with the selection. Go to File from the apple menu choose Library.
- Here you will see Show Duplicate items. After clicking on this option, you will see all the duplicates in selected attribute and you can easily delete duplicate songs and videos. This makes your hard disk lighter.
This is how you can clear duplicate files on your Mac if you find it difficult to do this manually then you can take help of a duplicate file finder tool. Now you can utilize free space to store new files or for installing more productive apps.
