Way back in the day, in the yesteryear that was probably Mac OS X Lion, I stopped doing what I had done on my Mac for a decade or so. A clean install of the latest version of OS X.
Lion installed nicely on top of Snow Leopard so I just never bothered with my traditional clean install. Along came Mountain Lion and I repeated the install-on-top-of process. Ditto for Mavericks. And, in turn, OS X Yosemite.
Not having an annual clean install meant that my Mac started to gather lots of files and folders that were no longer needed; app support files, duplicate files store in Documents, duplicate photos and music, and plenty of digital cruft which usually disappeared during the annual clean up.
How do you clean up a Mac and get rid of files you don’t need or duplicate files? Enter Gemini (as in twins, as in duplicates), an inexpensive Mac utility which does just that. It finds and gets rid of duplicate files.
Let Gemini scan your Mac’s files and it will list those that are exact duplicates of other files, while preserving important system files.
Gemini is simple to use, but comes with a little pleasure built-in. Drag and drop a folder of files onto Gemini and it scans for dupes. Click the Auto Select button to delete the dupes.
The app is very fast, especially on Mac’s with SSD storage, and it can find duplicate files and files, on both internal storage and connected external storage devices. Select multiple folders of files and have Gemini scan all of them at once.
It’s actually fun to get a list of files that are not needed, and click to delete them, gaining valuable storage space, and eliminating clutter all at the same time.
The built-in data visualizer lets you see which duplicates take up the most space and where they’re located. Built-in security options make sure at least one duplicate file will remain on your Mac. You can also define which files, folders, extensions for Gemini to ignore.
Gemini isn’t one of those Mac utilities you’ll use everyday. After all, if your Mac is clean it’s likely to stay clean for awhile. The app is available on the Mac App Store, and is priced slightly beyond my threshold of throwaway money, but the developer provides a free demo to try first. It’s a well done, mature utility for any Mac user who’s got a bit more clutter and duplicate files than is comfortable.