Over a 3 year people we have moved all our file storage from individual computers to a single shared iCloud system. One known result is file duplication. I am looking for software that will find duplicate files in the MacOS system. Photos & Videos are not a problem. The main issues are Office files & PDFs.
Google finds lots of candidates.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=macos+duplicate+file+finder
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yep did that.
I was hoping for a recommendation from someone with experience. The on line ratings in my view are about 90% fraud. i.e. trust at your own peril.
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I’ve never trusted any of the automatic duplicate finders… Problem is that a doc may be in a related project folder as well as other projects, so I need to see the details… In the end, there is, I know, a lot of duplicate files on my main drive, and it’s tedious to clean 'em up… Organize to todays thinking, but then miss some other way… With near a Tb of used space, it’s a lot of files… User files, plus system or application files… adds up… Likely multiple old backups buried in there, too…
I use Beyond Compare on my Windows platforms…I like that when you load two folders next to each other, they show the name, date, and size of the file so you can see if they are truly the same. We used this at the company I worked at before retiring so it’s not just some spam company - our IT department vetted it and negotiated licenses so I have more trust with this than some others.
It’s pretty manual but I can clean through folders fairly quickly.
Looks like they have a Mac version too.
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