How to find duplicate videos on Mac

The longer you use your Mac, the more likely it needs a tune-up. Things might be slowing down, or worse, you might be running out of hard drive storage. And it’s no surprise that video files are probably the largest you have on your computer, making them the best files to clean up. Especially if you have duplicate videos, they’re just wasting space that could impact your Mac’s performance.

This article will give you tips and show you the best ways to find duplicate videos.

How to delete duplicate videos manually?

Searching for any duplicate files, videos included, can take a bit of time. But if you’re looking for a more automated approach, you’re in luck. You can skip down to the next section to learn about software to find duplicate files.

But, if you’re looking to take on a new project and don’t mind putting in a little time, you can use Smart Folders in macOS to help you look for those duplicates. To start searching for duplicate videos:

1. Open a new Finder window.
2. Click File > New Smart Folder.
3. In the top right, click +.
4. Set both dropdowns to Kind and Movie, respectively.

Now you can search through the results of your Smart Folder and drag the duplicates to the Trash. And don’t forget to empty your trash when you’re done; otherwise, those files will still be taking up space on your hard drive.

If you want to come back to your search later, you can always save your Smart Folder by clicking the Save button in the top right corner. You’ll be prompted to name the folder and choose a location to save it.

How to delete duplicate videos with Gemini 2

Maybe you don’t have the time to sit in front of your computer and manually sift through your files; you can use the app Gemini 2. You can set it to scan a specific folder or your entire hard drive looking for all of your duplicate files, including your videos. After you download and install Gemini 2 on your Mac, follow these steps to scan and quickly clean up your duplicates.

1. Download and open Gemini 2.
2. Click + > Home Folder > Scan for Duplicates.
3. When the scan is finished, you can choose Smart Cleanup or Review Results.

While Gemini 2 is scanning your files, it’s also using an algorithm to select the best version of each file to keep automatically. So, you can get rid of all of your duplicate files just by clicking the Smart Cleanup button. No extra work needed on your end.

You can also review the results of the scan and decide for yourself which copies of your videos you want to delete. Then, in the sidebar, you can choose to view only the videos on your Mac or go through all of the file types.

Tips to keep your Mac optimized

After you do your duplicate video search and clean up those unwanted files, there are a couple of other things you can do to keep your Mac running smoothly.

Keep the desktop tidy

Because your desktop is designed for quick access to files, your Mac has to load a preview of all of the files on your desktop just in case you decide to click on one of them. As you can probably imagine, this takes up a lot of resources and can slow down your computer if your desktop is cluttered with hundreds of files. An easy solution is to put them all into a folder that lives on your desktop. Obviously, the best thing would be organizing them into multiple folders, but at the very least, one folder will stop your Mac from using resources for those previews.

Run regular cleanups

As you read earlier, your Mac can and will slow down the longer you use it. So, even though you might clean up all of your duplicate videos today, your Mac will slow back down when you need to clean it up again. There’s where Gemini 2 comes in handy. Because it makes cleaning up duplicate and similar files quick and easy, you can get into a habit of regularly scanning your computer.

Hard drive space is precious. And it’s not easy to just add more to your Mac. So, cleaning up the duplicate videos that are just taking up space is a great way to reclaim some of your storage. Even if you’re not noticing any performance issues with your Mac yet, remember to remove your duplicate files is a great habit to get into.