Imagine buying a Mac device and suddenly you start encountering flaws on the device. It will leave you frustrated and annoyed distracting you from your work. There can be numerous reasons that can be the cause of this underlying problem. Having duplicate files on your system can be the biggest culprit of all. You will never know that there is a large accumulation of duplicate files on your Mac that may be giving you unwanted tension.
Duplicate files on your Mac may result in slow- processing time, taking extra storage space, freezing, or crashing your device. The piling of large media files can even do more damage to your system than ever. To find those duplicate files can be a hard job sometimes, but you are at the right place. This article will let you know how to detect duplicate files on your Mac device. Let us get started then.
Steps to find duplicate files on your Mac device
Regardless of whether you own a Macbook, iMac, or Mac Pro, it is quite simple to find the duplicate files on your system. The procedure is pretty simple and convenient to follow. It is better to follow a lead rather than review the options that may make the chore more difficult. Let us see the steps:
- Select the “file” in the menu bar of your Mac device.
- Now, pick the “new smart folder” from the dropdown menu.
- A window will appear in front of you. Click the “+” icon located next to the “save” option that you will see on your system.
- Choose the “kind” drop-down menu.
- Select a file you want to narrow the search down by.
- You will be now able to browse for all files stored in the Mac device, based on the file type whether they are documents, applications, music files, etc.
- Scroll through this grid view to find the duplicate files you want to delete, it helps to order the file list by ‘name’ so that you can easily access the duplicate files on the device.
- You can confirm whether the files are duplicate by opening them and comparing the documents in question, you can also use ‘Get Info’ on the files to make sure the documents are the same file size.
- Right-click on any of the duplicate files and select “Move to Trash/Bin”. In order to delete the files permanently from your system, you just need to right-click on the Trash Bin in your Mac system and empty the Trash Bin.
Now you have pretty much learned how to find the duplicate files on your Mac device using the built-in smart folder feature which utilizes search tools on the Mac device to narrow down a folder by file type.
The Bottom line
It is not always necessary to use a third-party to find the duplicates on your device. Following a simple guide may make a clear path for you. Though there are other options also if you want to have some extra space in your system. But, deleting duplicate files is also a crucial step in order to maintain the smooth run of your Mac device.
