Having duplicate files on your Mac can be the most vexing thing ever. Duplicate files can be a daunting factor leading to your system’s deteriorating speed and decreasing storage space. Of course, no one wants to buy and keep a bunch of hard drives just because their Mac device is filled up with unnecessary clones.
Where do these clone files come from?
If all of your files on your Mac device are showing duplicates, there could be a number of reasons for that. Maybe you activated a multiple back-up tool/option or maybe you are sharing the same file on multiple applications. Sometimes, duplicates are also generated when you unintentionally download the same file more than once.
What to do?
If you are a Mac user, it may be possible that you are seeing duplicates for all the files due to a glitch. In such a case, it is likely that you will see duplicates when you go to “All My File” but not when you are on your desktop, document or any other real location.
If you are stuck in such a situation, here’s what you can do:
- Press the Command, Option, and Escape buttons simultaneously.
- You will now see a list of programs that you could force quit.
- Go to “Finder”.
- Select “Relaunch”.
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Alternatively, it is possible that you have a Time Machine set up and you are seeing all backup files as well. To resolve this issue:
- Head to the System Preferences.
- Click on “Spotlight”.
- Select the Privacy tab.
- Click on the “+” button towards the bottom of the window.
- Here, you can add the Time Machine drive(s).
- Quit out of System Preferences once you have excluded your Time Machine drive.
In case both of the above-mentioned methods do not work, it is likely that your system is not facing a glitch but is actually a victim of excessive duplicate files. In that case, finding and removing each duplicate file can be quite a gigantic task.
To avoid this, you could use a tool that detects and removes duplicate files in Mac swiftly. Clones File Checker (CFC) is one such efficient and easy-to-use tool. It is compatible with Mac OS X 10.10 onwards and works with various types of files including images, videos, archives, and documents. With tools like CFC, you can easily customize your scan, preview the results and then either relocate the duplicates or delete them permanently. It’s a snap!
We hope our little tricks will help you solve your problem!
