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Is there an application that would search duplicate files in my Mac with an easy way to delete the duplicates?

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As mentioned by @Cawas, superuser.com/questions/111390/show-duplicate-files is a duplicate of this (and has a couple different answers to try). –  studgeek Feb 22 '13 at 14:28

8 Answers 8

I'll just copy part of my other answer on a similar subject and also link to a possible duplicate as another reference.

There are many commercial options, some may be better than the listed below, I haven't tried them all. Anyway, I'm listing my choice of apps considering which ones I was able to try. Coincidentally, this was not where I first heard about DupeCheck droplet, but thanks so much Systech for building it up! :)

  • TidyUp is a very well known app in this subject. You can specify where to scan for what kind of duplicates. It offers basic and advanced modes, several different strategies and criterias.

  • MrClean is a free tool that just scans for folders for duplicates and trash them. Very simplistic but efficient if you're sure on what you're doing.

  • Chipmunk scans duplicates and let you choose which ones you want to trash. It offers a node-view of folders and you can select to "delete all files in a folder that have duplicates elsewhere, or vice versa" as well as hand-picking. It may take very long to scan all files, but it does a very decent job after that.

  • DupeCheck "drop a file on it and it will use your Spotlight index to see if you have a potential duplicate somewhere." That's about this nice open source app. Not a great tool for space cleaning at once, but over time it helps you keep your space clean.

  • DuplicateFileSearcher from the website: "is a free powerful software utility that will help you to find and delete duplicate files on your computer. It can also be used to calculate MD5 and SHA hashes. The software runs in Windows, Linux, Solaris and MacOS.". Enough said.

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I've converted a bash script into a droplet. Drop a file on it, and it will use your Spotlight index to see if you have a potential duplicate somewhere on your system.
Download the free DupeCheck droplet, unzip it, and find a good spot to put it. Drag and drop any file onto it, and it will use Spotlight to identify possible duplicates.

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And after finding duplicates: remember that using Get Info you might find where the file came from (like from what website, email or which other computer), just in case you wonder how you got the duplicates. –  Arjan Sep 25 '09 at 9:34

I've written a simple python script FileDupeFinder.py that will find file duplicate files on OSX (and probably Linux/*nix) systems. Right now, you pass it a directory root path and a minimum file size and it will walk the directory tree and output a list of files that it believes to be duplicates. It will ignore files that are hard links of each other. You can tell it to exclude directories (right now it just excludes Backups.backupdb, as this script isn't ready to handle Time Machine wackiness) and tell it not to span filesystems (though these aren't currently paramaterized, they are easy enough to set in the script itself.

This script is only minimally tested, but it has worked reasonably enough for me.

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Thanks seems to work well. Just took me a few secs to realize you don't pass the root directory in (it accepted it without an error), but you need to pass it as a '-d' param. Otherwise it seems very efficient and tidy. –  Marius Aug 26 '12 at 17:01

There is Araxis Find Duplicate Files which is pretty convenient.

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Decloner is another one.

You can choose the minimum file size you want to have checked, and it can eliminate all but one. Doesn't seem to be able to create hard links or symlinks, though, which I'd want.

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i recommended dupeGuru by Hardcoded Software, it's Open Source Fairware and free to use

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It's actually not free to use (anymore at least), its limited to ten deletes/moves until you pay... –  studgeek Feb 22 '13 at 14:23

The most convenient GUI that I have found for this task is Gemini, but a script might be enough for your needs. I personally scan for duplicates just to assess how much of my data is redundant (currently 3/50 GB, or 6% of the data), but I rarely delete anything in case it breaks the internal magic of my file chaos.

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I've been using TidyUp a lot on MacOS X to find duplicate files and sort them out.

The GUI is not necessarily 100% intuitive, but the application is very powerful, offers a lot of options and choices for defining what a duplicate is (same name?, same size, same content, ...) and it also has a powerful interface for displaying duplicate groups and deciding what to do with the duplicates (or some of them).

I never regretted buying it and it was very helpful for me.

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protected by slhck Dec 22 '12 at 10:11


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