5 Best Ways to Search and Delete Duplicate Files and Photos on Mac

If you are concerned about your Mac’s storage space, we bet you could clear some of it if you delete duplicate files. Duplicate files are often overlooked when clearing storage space, but trust us, they take up much more space than you think. Let’s not forget how many times you would have clicked on the download link more than once, saved a copy of the original file after modifying or editing it, and whatnot, all of which are nothing but duplicate files.

While the problem may sound simple, it’s hard to search and delete duplicate files. And before you try doing a manual search, please don’t; it’s nearly impossible, and there are better, more efficient ways to do the same. This guide outlines five such ways to search and delete duplicate files and photos on Mac. Let’s begin!

Delete Duplicate Files and Photos Manually

If your situation is under control and you would rather get rid of duplicate files you already know exist, try this no-nonsense method. Since files possessing similar names get saved with consecutive numbers after their names, you can search for file names ending with (1), (2), and so on. They are very likely to be duplicate files, so you can simply delete them after locating the original ones.

Delete Duplicate Files Using Third-Party Cleaning Apps

While cleaner apps like CleanMyMac X, MacKeeper, and Cleaner One Pro are more popular for clearing storage space, a part of their feature set includes deleting duplicate files. Junk removal, a standard functionality of cleaner apps, usually includes searching and removing duplicate files. It’s easy, fast, and straightforward.

Apps To Delete Duplicate Files and Photos

If cleaner apps and manual cleaning aren’t your cup of tea, you can instead try dedicated apps. Such apps are tailor-made to identify and delete duplicate files and photos from your Mac without much hassle. Let’s take a look at three such apps.

1. Gemini 2

A popular duplicate file-cleaning application from the house of MacPaw, Gemini 2 is everything you can ask for. What we greatly admire about the app is its commendable scanning speed. In our testing, Gemini 2 could separate out similar-looking images despite having different file names. Of course, searching for duplicate files was no big thing for the app.

To keep things concise, Gemini 2 lets you scan through your entire Mac, a particular folder, image files, or music files. You can delete the duplicate files immediately or manually after reviewing them. Gemini 2 can check for duplicate files in real-time and prompt you accordingly, say when you accidentally download the same file twice. Although the free tier is quite limited, the premium version is well-priced and starts at $19.95.

2. dupeGuru

If you are looking for a free app to do the job for you, look no further than dupeGuru. As per our testing, the app is a lot slower when it comes to scanning for duplicate images. We didn’t face such issues when searching for duplicate files, as the app quickly searches through a folder. Sure, dupeGuru doesn’t have an appealing interface to begin with, but it can be overlooked, considering its free and open-source nature.

dupeGuru has a thoughtful fuzzy search feature that can detect similar-looking images even if they aren’t replicas of each other. You can also fine-tune the search algorithm within the app’s settings to produce accurate results. If you don’t want to uninstall the duplicate files, you can instead rename or copy them to a different folder within the app itself. Overall, dupeGuru is a solid app for this purpose.

3. Photosweeper X

If the photos on your Mac need more sorting than the files, try out Photosweeper X. As a specialized duplicate photo finder, Photosweeper X can search not only through your Mac’s folders but also through the Photos app and Lightroom images to mark and eliminate duplicate photos. It doesn’t end here: Photosweeper X can also search for edited images and duplicate video files, which is one of its kind.

The app includes a plethora of features, such as batch renaming of duplicates, locked photos, sorting photos with tags, AI image comparison, and more. Although the interface feels a little dated in our experience, the app, on the other hand, is adequately fast and fairly accurate. The only nitpick is the fact that Photosweeper X is a paid app, but on the bright side, it does offer a free trial to try out before purchasing the full version.

Delete Duplicate Files Using Smart Folder

While this method is more suited to finding duplicate files, deleting them only takes an additional step. Furthermore, this method relies solely on file names, not their contents, so you can’t search for duplicate photos. Regardless, the steps are as follows –

1. Open Finder and select the File option from your Mac’s menu bar.
2. Click on the New Smart Folder option from the dropdown menu.
   
3. A dialog box will open where you must select the plus (+) icon to be able to set the search parameters.
   
4. Select the dropdown menu arrow following “is” and select your desired file type. You can also search through all file types one by one.
   
5. Once the search results appear, select the hamburger menu (≡) icon to show the results as a list for easy viewing. Furthermore, sort the results by name using the icon represented in the image below.
   
6. If you come across files having similar names, right-click on them and select Show in Enclosing Folder. This will take you to the file’s original location, where you can delete it.

Delete Duplicate Files Using Terminal Command

Duplicate files can also be searched using the good-old macOS Terminal. Again, you can’t search for similar-looking images as this method relies on file names. To do so –

1. Open Terminal.
2. Specify the search directory using a tilde and backward slash. For instance, if you want to switch to the documents folder, type ~/Documents and hit return. Ensure the directory you are searching for is present on your Mac.
3. Enter the following command:
   find ./ -type f -exec md5 {} \; | awk -F ‘=’ ‘{print $2 “\t” $1}’ | sort | tee duplicates.txt
4. Navigate to the respective folder, and you will see a file named duplicates.txt. Open it.
   
5. If you come across file names with an md5 tag, they are duplicates you can delete.
   

Get Rid of Duplicate Files and Photos in a Flash

After this, you might have realized deleting duplicate files isn’t daunting. With so many third-party and cleaner apps, you can get it done in minutes. While using the apps is as seamless as it gets, we recommend checking out the files and photos thoroughly before deleting them. While the smart folder and terminal methods are good enough for a small number of duplicates, they give valuable insight into the number of duplicate files and photos your Mac has.