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Find duplicate files on Mac OS X

Hi all

I am trying to sort out duplicate folders in a folder which again has an awful lot of subfolders on a Mac OS X system. I want to have a list with the absolute paths to the duplicate files. I tried to solve the Problem in the Bash shell but if there is a GUI Application which does this I would prefer it.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Feb 20 '10 at 23:25

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marked as duplicate by quack quixote, Diago Mar 11 '10 at 5:57


Duplicate files or duplicate folders? And how do you qualify a "duplicate"? –  Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Feb 20 '10 at 22:38

4 Answers 4

Mr.Clean is an excellent free graphical tool for this:

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This seems like great stuff. Thanks! –  Cawas Feb 22 '10 at 16:07

There's also CleanMyMac, which is mostly for cleaning and not so much for finding duplicates:

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... and Chipmunk, which is made to find duplicated files and quickly delete the ones outside or inside the specific folder. Not so good for finding duplicates in the same folder or randomly stored, but you still can be used if you want to go 1 by 1.

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

I solved the problem a long time ago but didn't have the time to write down the answer. Here it is:

Mac OS X has a tool which can solve the problem in a decent way. It's called FileMerge and can be found in /Developer/Application/Utilities when you install the Xcode developer tools from the Mac OS X CD.

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It first compares the two folders you selected and then shows the differences. You can then select if you want to merge the files to one destination file.

For further information read this article:


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Would you happen to know if there's a way to get that tool without installing Xcode? –  Cawas Mar 11 '10 at 0:01
