How to Manage Duplicate Files in Mac OS X?

In this fast paced digitized scenario, everyone likes to work and deliver the output quickly. Slow running electronic devices spoil the precious time and resources as well. If we talk about Mac OS X then, there can be many places like iTunes, Mail downloads, and external USB drives etc. where duplicates such as files and photos occupy the hard disk space unnecessarily and keep the system slow while executing any operation. The best thing is to get rid from these is to find and remove the replicate documents and freeing up the valuable disk storage area.

Ways to Delete Duplicates Files in Mac OS X

There are many ways to list and clean the duplicates in Mac. It depends upon the experience of a user, how long he/she is using Mac system and aware about the issues. Lets see further, how to delete the duplicates in OS X

Case 1: How to Remove Files from iTunes?

iTunes has a facility to check the duplicates. Please follow the following steps to list the identical items:

• Go to iTunes Library and highlight the relative items like movies, music, podcast albums etc.
• Go to File menu and click on 'Display Duplicates'
• All the duplicates items will be displayed instantly in the main iTunes window to delete those simply.
• Hold down Alt key while selecting duplicates

iTunes Duplicate Files Window

Case 2: How to Remove Duplicates via Terminal Command?

If you are an expert Mac user and well known about how to tweak Mac Terminal to delete duplicate Mac files then try to execute the below mentioned ‘Shell Command’ scripts to remove duplicates.

• Go to Utilities folder and open Terminal or use spotlight feature to access ‘Terminal’ window directly
• Change the folder location to home document folder by typing cd <folder name> command & hit enter
• Type this command to determine whether files are identical
• 
  

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

• Once you hit enter after typing this command, duplicates.txt file will be saved in the current folder. Open .txt file to view identical files and if you want to delete all the listed files then type the below mentioned command and make sure to copy each files to another folder before typing this command because it deletes all files completely.

while read file; do rm “$file”; done < duplicates.txt >

 

duplicates.txt files items

Case3: How to Remove Duplicates with Finder?

It is also one of the best ways to locate the replicate files manually. Though this process is a little slow but management of those files which to delete and which one to keep can be easily done.

• Open the finder window
• Manage the display of ‘Size’ and ‘Kind’ columns
• In the search field, type the asterisk symbol

Once, you get the results of identical items along with name, type and size. Filter the results by ‘Kind’ and see the list of identical items. Delete those one, which you don’t want and please make sure about having original ones in another location before deleting process.

Finder Application

This process is time consuming and every item is reviewed manually for deletion.

Case 4: How to Remove Duplicates with a Third Party Applications?

If you are still unable to find and delete all the duplicates files, folders from your Mac machine, then you can directly buy a third party application and let the duplicate finder application to do everything at your behalf and let you sit with patience. There are many ‘Duplicate Finder’ applications available online which relieve most of the drive space by locating and removing the duplicate files with in few clicks along with an easy to use GUI interface.

By using the above mentioned tips, getting rid from duplicates in Mac is so easy. Be careful before using these tips, else a reliable third party application can be used by novices.