Best Duplicate Folder Compare App

Summary: This essay will discuss the best duplicate file finder and remover for Mac and Window, we reviewed the chosen duplicate file finder’s unique features, pros & cons, and we also take a look at other good duplicate finders could be considered. Read on and get the best duplicate file finder that you need.

Auslogics' Duplicate File Finder is easier to use than Digital Volcano's Duplicate Cleaner, but Duplicate Cleaner identifies more types of redundant files. Dennis O'Reilly May 13, 2010 10:01 a.m.

• Fast Duplicate File Finder will find all duplicate files in a folder and its sub folders. The application will compare the content of your files so it will find duplicates even if they are using.
• BS Folder Compare is a free folder compare software for Windows. It is used to examine the identicality and differences between the two folders. Through its simple interface, you can easily add folders on Folder 1 and Folder 2 section. After that, you need to click on Process Button to start comparison. A complete report consisting of file names contained by the folders will open up on default.

Our hard drives are most times occupied with photos, music, movies, and documents that we use daily; but then after a while, regardless of how large the size these storage drives may seem to us, at some point we quickly run out of space.

We need almost all our files, but what we don’t always need are the duplicates. Well, these multiple copies of single files are not always intentional, it could be as a result of numerous downloads, copying and pasting actions, created backups and residues of some installed programs or software applications.

If you have ever submitted the wrong business document or an incorrect assignment as a result of twin files sharing the same name, you would agree with me that these duplicated files need to be taken care of.

Just thinking about manually spotting and removing every multiple file is already tiring – now, this is where the duplicate file finder comes in. It is one stress-free way to bring this kind of chaos into order, find and remove duplicate files automatically and quickly.

After hours testing and reviewing, we found the best and most highly recommended duplicate file finder tools in the market.

Best Duplicate File Finder and Remover for Mac: Gemini 2

Price: $19.95 – single license for one Mac
Supported platform: macOS 10.10 and higher
Latest version: 2.5.5
Official page:https://macpaw.com/gemini

Gemini 2 is a powerful and easy to use duplicate file finder developed by Macpaw Inc. (maker of the famous cleaning app CleanMyMac). Gemini 2 can help Mac users finding duplicate files including photos, videos, audio files, documents and more accurately. With its feature of smart scan and clean, remove duplicate files on Mac hard drive or external drive couldn’t be easier. Besides, Gemini 2 won the Red Dot award for its intuitive and beautiful interface, and so far it has millions of users all over the world. If you want a smart way to find and clean duplicates on the macOS system, Gemini 2 would be the best choice.

The Unique Features of Gemini 2

• It’s easy to find duplicate and similar files, does all the hard work intelligently.
• Grouped scanned files by exact duplicates and similar files.
• Smart Cleanup to help you autoselect the copies and clean the duplicates & similar with clicks.
• Support to identify duplicate folders.
• Support to remove duplicates in cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive.
• To keep import files safe by excluding certain files and folder from scan.

What I Like

1. Find any kinds of duplicate files: photos, videos, music, docs on your Mac, external dive, and cloud storage.
2. The scanning works quickly.
3. It’s easy to review the sorted files after scanning: Exact Duplicates in different file types and Similar Files.
4. You have control of the files: remove the duplicates to Trash, or move duplicates to a separate folder or a USB drive, or you can replace copies with hard links to save space without deleting the files.
5. It is learning your patterns, excellent navigation experience.

What I Don’t Like

1. May crash when scanning large amounts of files.
2. The support email response may delay.

Steps to using Gemini 2 to find duplicate files on Mac and remove them:

Step 1. Add folders to scan duplicate files. And then click “Scan for Duplicates”.

Tips: You can set the preference before start the scanning. You can specify the ignore files and folders, or some file extensions, smart selection rules, duplicates removal method.

Step 2. The scan will show you how many duplicate files are found in real time, to complete the scanning may take minutes, which depends on the number of files in selected folders. If you don’t want to wait too long and think it had found enough duplicate files, you can stop at any time, Gemini 2 will show the found results to you.

Step 3. When the scan completed, Gemini 2 will automatically select the duplicate files for you, you can remove the duplicate files by Smart Cleanup, you also can review the found duplicates by clicking Review Results. Though Gemini 2 removes the duplicate into Trash in default, but it’s better to review before the cleaning.

Best Duplicate Folder Compare Application

Best Duplicate File Finder and Remover for Windows: Duplicate Cleaner Pro by DigitalVolcano

Price: $29.95 – single user license
Supported platform: Windows 10, 8, 7, and Vista.
Latest version: 4.1.3
Official page: https://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/duplicatecleaner.html

After reviewed about 10 duplicate finding apps on Windows, we think Duplicate Cleaner Pro from DigitalVolcano could be the best duplicate file finder for Windows users. Duplicate Cleaner Pro is designed to free up duplicate photos & images, music, film, videos, documents, etc. to gain more PC hard drive spaces. This duplicate file finder works on smart comparison algorithms that ensure accurate detection in file folder and hard drive.

Duplicate Cleaner Pro is available with a 15 days free trial version, you can try out all the features, but there is a restriction on deleting files, only the first 100 groups duplicate files can be deleted. Pro has lots more functions including similar image detection, finding duplicate folders and unique files, searching in zip files and advanced filters and search methods.

The Unique Features of Duplicate Cleaner Pro:

• Fast scanning and accurate duplicate comparison.
• Find similar images, even they are resized, rotated, edited and more.
• Support camera RAW image formats.
• Find duplicate folders.
• Could find unique/non-duplicate files.
• Intelligent select the found duplicate files.
• You can export and import the results for late processing & reviewing.

What I Like

1. It can find duplicate files accurately with smart comparison.
2. Scan multiple folders, ZIP archives, or even your entire computer at once quickly.
3. Support locate similar images (resized, rotated, etc.) and compare audio files by tags.
4. The duplicate files can be deleted to the recycle bin or moved into an archive elsewhere.
5. Offers quite extensive Help contents (online & offline), also has a dedicated support forum.

What I Don’t Like

1. The free version only support deleting 100 groups duplicate files.
2. You have to get the Pro version to get all the functions.

To get started with Duplicate Cleaner Pro, following these steps:

Step 1. Click “New Search” and set the search criteria. You can search duplicate files that match by their exact content or similar contents, or same file name, etc.

Tips: Duplicate Cleaner Pro allows you to search duplicate files using specified criteria. And it also has Image mode and Audio mode, which can help you to find only duplicate images or duplicate music.

Step 2. Then click “Start Scan”, and when the scan is complete, you will see an overview window which shows numbers of files scanned, how many duplicate files found, and how much disk space taken.

Step 3. Comes to the last, you can review the found duplicate files in different view types, such as Thumbnail view, list view, or context menu.

After reviewing, you can delete the duplicate files into trash bin, or move/copy to a specified folder.

Other Duplicate Finders Could Be Considered

Tidy Up 5 (for Mac)

Tidy Up is a Mac cleaning software that offers duplicate file cleaning and disk tidiness features. It can help you to search and find duplicates on Mac, and it supports many Apps like Lightroom, Photos, iTunes, Mail, Aperture and iPhoto, remove the duplicated images or files in these Apps is easy to go.

As the vendor claims, Tidy Up is a full-featured duplicate remover and designed for Pro users. It’s powerful, can plow through hundreds of thousands of files in minutes, comparing their content, and finding duplicates. But it is a bit complicated for some novice users, some features can be confusing for them.

Tidy Up offers a free trial version, which allows to delete 10 group duplicates, if you want to remove all the found duplicate files, you’ll need to purchase the full version with $29.99 tag (for one single computer). If you are a user of older version Tidy Up, you can get Tidy Up 5 at $23.99 for three computers. You can learn more about Tidy Up 5 and download the free trial version from its official page.

Easy Duplicate Finder (Mac & Windows)

Another great duplicate finder for Mac and Windows could be considered is Easy Duplicate Finder. Easy Duplicate Finder is a powerful duplicate file finder that can help you find specified types of duplicate files by using different scan modes, and with very easy steps.

Except cleaning duplicate files from your HDD, SSD and speed up your computer, Easy Duplicate Finder claims it also can remove duplicates in Cloud storage like Google Drive & Dropbox. Another feature is, Easy Duplicate Finder offers an “Undo” button for emergency recovery.

The free trial version of Easy Duplicate Finder also only can delete 10 groups duplicate files. And the paid version starts at $39.95 for 1 Computer, includes unlimited updates for 1 year. This duplicate finder app can run on Windows computer (Windows 10/8/7, XP / Vista) and Mac computer with an Intel processor (OS X 10.6 – 10.14.2 Mojave). You can read our review of Easy Duplicate Finder, to learn more details and testing results.

DupeGuru (Free)

DupeGuru is a free tool can find duplicate files on your computer (OS X, Windows, Linux), it has three modes – Standard, Music and Picture, with each mode having its own scan types and little features.

DupeGuru is a great tool to find duplicate files, but it has been neglected since from Nov. 2016, and many users reported it doesn’t work for the latest systems, or took over too long time to scanning for duplicate files. So our suggestions are, if you still run an old system on your computer and want to find & clean duplicate files, you could get it to have a try. But if you are running the latest system, such macOS Mojave, you’d better get another duplicate file remover listed above.

Conclusion

Duplicate files and unwanted files will occupy much disk space on our computer, and even can slow down the system, but remove the duplicate files by hand is time-consuming. So the best way is to get a good duplicate file finder, and let it to do the cleaning automatically for us. We also tested other duplicate file finder or remover apps on market, but at last, we only take the best duplicate file finder list above, as we found other duplicate finder are not working as claimed or outdated (e.g. can’t work on Windows 10 or macOS Mojave). Well, get one to have a try, or if you have better choices, please comment below and let us know.

Duplicate files can be a massive pain and cause huge headaches when you’re trying to find a specific file in all of that digital clutter. Not to mention all the space they take up on your hard drives. But who has the time, or the patience, to go through their entire computer folder by folder trying to clean it all up?

Fortunately, there are some really great apps that will scan for duplicate files and help you get rid of them in a flash. Here’s a glance at the top duplicate finders you’ll read about below:

Top 7 duplicate file finders for Mac

It’s always a good idea to scan for duplicates on your Mac. Maybe you’re running out of storage space, or your Mac feels a little more sluggish than usual. In either case, cleaning up the copied files on your computer should help you out some. And don’t worry, we’ve done the hard part for you by ranking the top duplicate finder apps for your Mac.

1. Gemini 2

Topping this list is Gemini 2. Not only is it easy to use, but it’s also an intelligent duplicate file remover for Mac. After it scans either a specific folder or your entire hard drive, you’re given two options, reviewing the results or simply deleting the duplicates with just one click of the Smart Cleanup button.

If you decide you want to review the copies that Gemini 2 finds, you’ll see the obvious information like the filename and other metadata, and you can view the photos or playback videos and music files.

2. dupeGuru

Similar to some of the other apps on this list, when you scan your computer with dupeGuru, it not only shows you files with duplicate filename but it also checks your files to see if they’re similar in any way. It also has special modes for music and photos to look for and display different information for both file types. The one downside to dupeGuru is that its interface is a little older and may not be as straightforward as some of the other apps on this list.

3. Duplicate Sweeper

You can scan any folder on your computer with Duplicate Sweeper, and it will show you all the copies of your files. Enabling the Auto Select feature will have the app choose which file you keep, but it’s strongly advised you still review those results before deleting any of them. Duplicate Sweeper scans everything in the folder(s) you select, including app files. So, if you accidentally delete a file that an app needs to run, then the app might not run correctly the next time you use it. Long story short, when using Duplicate Sweeper, just make sure you’re only deleting files you know are safe to remove.

4. Disk Drill

Disk Drill is actually a very powerful data recovery tool with an extra feature of duplicate finder for Mac. When you run Disk Drill, it will scan the folders you’ve selected and show you all of your copied files. The thing to keep in mind though, is that it will only show exact duplicates. Which means it might miss things like similar-looking photos where the angle is slightly different or duplicate files with different filenames. But one of the biggest benefits of running Disk Drill is if you do accidentally delete a file, you can run Disk Drill’s file recovery tool.

5. Easy Duplicate Finder

Best Duplicate Folder Compare App

Easy Duplicate Finder delivers on everything its name promises. You can simply drag and drop the folders you want to scan. Like other Mac duplicate finders, it lets you quickly review and delete the copies that it finds. But it also has an undo-delete feature, so if you do accidentally remove a file, you’re able to undo it.

6. Duplicate Detective

Best Duplicate Folder Compare App Download

Where Duplicate Detective really shines is with its simple-to-use and minimal interface. Even most novices would be able to open it and figure out how to find duplicate files on a Mac. But maybe you find yourself scanning for duplicates on a regular basis, the app has more advanced features, like Ignored Folder or Ignored File Extensions. So, you can scan better and smarter. If you download the trial to test it out, keep in mind, you can only scan for copied files, and if you want to delete those files, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version.

7. Photos Duplicate Cleaner

Rounding out the list with a sleek interface is the app Photos Duplicate Cleaner. It scans your iPhoto or Photos library, looking not only for duplicates but also for similar-looking images. And it even works with libraries that are stored on external hard drives. The obvious downside is that this app is only for your pictures, so if you wanted to scan for copies of other file types in the future, you’d need another app.

Best Duplicate Folder Compare App Store

It’s good to get in the habit of regularly scanning your Mac for duplicate and similar files. Whether you mean to or not, duplicates happen to the best of us. But being consistent about scanning and checking for them will help you keep the number of them down. And not to mention, help your Mac run at its best.