Dupe guide

Find duplicates synced from Google Drive on Mac

Google Drive for Mac syncs files to your disk where they can pile up as duplicates. Here's how to find them.

4 min read

Google Drive for Mac (the desktop client) mirrors your Drive contents into a local folder, and over time that folder accumulates the same duplicates your Drive has on the web. Files you uploaded twice, copies you made of shared documents, exported Google Docs saved next to their originals.

Two paths

The native way: Google Drive web + Finder

You can dedupe on the web first:

  1. Open drive.google.com in a browser.
  2. Use the search box: is:duplicate doesn’t exist, but searching by filename and sorting by size catches obvious pairs.
  3. For local files, open the Google Drive folder in Finder (usually ~/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-<email> or ~/Google Drive).
  4. Sort by Size, eyeball duplicates, verify with Preview.
  5. Move duplicates to the Trash. Google Drive syncs the deletion to the cloud (it goes to Drive’s Trash for 30 days).

The web side is limited and the local side is manual. For a few hundred files this is fine; for tens of thousands it’s not.

The Dupe way

Dupe scans the local Google Drive folder the same way it scans any folder.

  1. Download Dupe and open it.
  2. Click “Add Folder” and select your Google Drive sync folder.
  3. If you have streaming mode enabled (My Drive only available online), switch the files you care about to “Available offline” first so they’re local for Dupe to hash. Alternatively, only scan the “Mirrored” sections.
  4. Click “Scan.”
  5. Review duplicate groups and move the redundant copies to the Trash. Google Drive syncs the deletion.

A few Google Drive specifics:

Safety:

For most users, the biggest wins come from old upload folders and copies of Shared Drive content that were dragged in years ago.

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