My Mac’s storage has gotten pretty cluttered lately, and I’m starting to notice the same files showing up in multiple places. Some are probably old downloads, copied folders, or duplicate documents that I forgot about over time.
I’d like to free up some space, but manually checking everything sounds exhausting. Is there a simple way to scan for duplicate files on macOS and safely remove the extra copies without accidentally deleting important stuff?
A good starting point is checking folders like Downloads, Desktop, and Documents first—those usually collect the most duplicates. Sorting files by name or size in Finder can help you spot obvious copies pretty quickly before doing a deeper cleanup.
Be careful not to delete files just because they have the same name. Sometimes macOS adds “copy” or numbers to filenames, but other times, completely different files can still share the same name.
I cleaned up my Mac recently for the same reason and ended up using iBoysoft Cleaner. What I liked was that it grouped duplicate files together and let me preview them before deleting anything, which made the process feel a lot safer. It was especially helpful for clearing out old downloads and duplicated folders without having to compare everything manually.