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Tom Briant

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Monday, February 4, 2019

Decluttering Your Mac of duplicate files

I recently worked on cleaning out and clearing my boot drive. I got it down to below 300 Gb in used space. Still bloated blue whale size, but an improvement. Digital decluttering has begun!

 

I haven’t read Marie’s Kondo’s decluttering books. To be honest, I have read lots of other books on decluttering. I suspect a lot of these methods are universal.  

 

How I did It

 

First, I found out which Rooms (folders and sub-folders) contained the most digital debris. I used the OmniDiskSweeper tool from the Omnigroup. Yes, the same people who make those other great Omni apps.

This one is free. You pick a drive or partition to sweep.

1 Choose the drive or partition to sweep

 

2 High Sierra chosen to sweep

 

 

 

The app gets to work, sorting through all your files. It will say “sizing” in the titlebar of the window as it sweeps. It also shows the number of gigabytes swept so far.

3 ODS showing bytes swept so far

 

When done, you will see a number showing the size of all your files in the titlebar. All your files, even the hidden fatbombs you forgot about.

 

 

Below in the window, you will see to the left all your top-level folders, both visible and otherwise hidden, by size.

Your /User folder will usually be the biggest.

Click on the size displayed to break it down further by subfolders.

5 Folders organized by size

In case you prefer a graphical display of your fattest folders, I can recommend Daisy Disk or GrandPerspective.

 

6 Daisy Disk

 

 

7 GrandPerspective

 

8 GrandPerspective display

 

 

Duplicates, Duplicates, Duplicates

 

I have a lot of duplicate files. I’ve downloaded the same file twice or I have an earlier and later version. How do I find all the duplicate files?

A lot of the time, you know where you put duplicate files. You just want to search 1 or 2 folders. A lot of duplicate file finders, though, search the whole disk or partition first. You get a huge list of duplicates.

Gemini 2 from MacPaw allowed me to search only my selected folders.

I could weed out the duplicate files, placing a checkmark next to the duplicates to send to the Trash.

 

I got rid of 2.17 gigabytes of excess PDFs within an hour from just two folders of e-books. This beat sifting through a whole 1 Terabyte hard drive’s worth of duplicates.   

 



 

Step 1

 

Boot Up Gemini 2. I should warn you it has proven unstable at times, probably due to constructing tables in memory. This increases speed, but can prove unstable. 

To reach this screen, press Command + N for New Scan

9 Start here with Gemini 2

 

Now drag the folder(s) you want to examine to the center circle. You’ll see a green symbol with a cross. You can release the mouse button.

 

10 Drag E books to Gemini 2

 

This screen means Gemini 2 has accepted your files for scanning. Click on the green button “Scan for Duplicates"

 

11 Gemini 2 ready to scan

 

You’ll see this screen as Gemini 2 scans your folder and sub-folders for duplicate files. Give it time. 

 

12 Gemini 2 finding duplicates

 

 

Gemini 2 has finished its wowrk. Now you can see the list of duplicates arranged by size

 

13 Gemini 2 has finished

Gemini 2 displays the selected set of duplicates. Over to the right, you’ll see a display of the first page of a PDF

 

14 Duplicate MacValley Voices

This is a closer view of what you see when choosing duplicate files to delete. Click on the rightward facing arrow next to the file title. 

This displays the files and their paths. 

15 Names and paths of two duplicate MacValley Voices

Choose a file to delete  and this is what you see.

16A One MacValley Voice to be deleted

Over at the lower right-hand corner, you see the total amount of files selected for deletion and the button to click to delete them.

16B What to delete and how to delete it

You’ve deleted your first set of files. Congratulations. Wanna go back for more, or call it a day? It’s your choice. 

 

Gemini 2 will start over where you left on the next time you boot the app up.

17 File deleted

 

 

 

Tom Briant

Editor MacValley Blog

Apple News and Views for Monday 02-04-2019

Apple News and Views for Monday, 2/3/2019

How do they stand all that rain in Seattle? Just asking…



How to Reinstall macOS if macOS Recovery is unavailable

In other words, you’ve wiped the boot drive and don’t have an installer handy.

I assume you read this on your computer at work or another computer at home.



The most useful Siri Shortcuts for iPhone

Guess I need a better phone than my 5C



How to set up a Mac and macOS to take advantage of an internal SSD and external storage setup

Macworld finally took notice of this hack to make your /User directory portable.

Read this article by M. Christopher Stevens on how to do this right, and getting all the file permissions in place. Don’t do a simple drag and drop!



How to Give your 2012 or 2014 Mac mini a performance boost by replacing the hard drive with an SSD

If you bought a 2012 or 2014 Mac mini and want to bump up its performance, you can do it! Read the article to find out how.



Apple needs blockbuster acquisitions in gaming & video streaming to thrive, claims J.P. Morgan

Wall Street (those wonderful people who brought you 2008) wants Apple to buy Netflix and Activision.



Apple Watch Series 4 fall detection summons emergency services, saves elderly man.

Another reason to get an Apple Watch.



Tim Cook admits that higher iPhone prices are a ‘factor’ in declining upgrade rates

You think so, Tim?

 

Marie Kondo tries to get my digital life in order

How to KonMari Your Way to a Happier Digital Life



Today the closets, tomorrow the hard drives!

I searched on the topic “Marie Kondo digital” in Google. A lot of articles popped up.



Review: HP Tango X, an AirPrint printer that tries to look like a book

Adventures in making a printer not look like a large ugly plastic object in your stylish home.



Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog





 

 

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Did you backup your computer today?

Dear Friends:

Did you back up your computer lately? 

Today in Southern California the weather is wet and blustery. Good day to stay inside, watch Netflix or read Agatha Christie novels. 

But you must  make sure you backed up your Mac!

If you don’t know how to back up your Mac using Time Machine, Apple has you covered here. 

Tom Briant

Editor MacValley Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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