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womanofthehills

(9,202 posts)
Tue May 1, 2018, 02:39 PM May 2018

Need help - Now have thousands of photos on my desktop

I had Image Capture and iphoto open and thought I was opening one image from Image Capture to my desktop. I left the room for a while and when I came back, thousands of images are now on my desktop. Help - how do i get rid of them? It would take me weeks to drag them all to the trash as my computer is not super fast right now.

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Need help - Now have thousands of photos on my desktop (Original Post) womanofthehills May 2018 OP
start file explorere lapfog_1 May 2018 #1
Open a new Finder window and "view by date." Atman May 2018 #2
Open your hard disk and work your way to the Desktop Folder ... eppur_se_muova May 2018 #3
Thanks everyone!! DU is the best!! womanofthehills May 2018 #4
Onyx Tetrachloride Feb 2019 #5

lapfog_1

(30,069 posts)
1. start file explorere
Tue May 1, 2018, 02:46 PM
May 2018

navigate to your desk top
Click sort by type (should put all your photos together)
Now click and hold while scrolling to select all of your photos... (use the right button on your mouse)
after selecting all of your photos you don't want, left click inside the selection and click "delete" from the menu

You might want to do this for a few hundred at a time.

Atman

(31,464 posts)
2. Open a new Finder window and "view by date."
Tue May 1, 2018, 02:46 PM
May 2018

Everything from the recent import should be together. Select the first one in the list, then shift>select the last one on the list. Everything in-between should also be selected. The right-click (or control click) and a menu should pop up with the option to "Move to trash." Do it. Provided, that is, that you actually want to move them all to trash. If not, you can also create a new folder and move them there.

eppur_se_muova

(37,348 posts)
3. Open your hard disk and work your way to the Desktop Folder ...
Tue May 1, 2018, 02:47 PM
May 2018

there you can list files by name, date, etc. instead of as icons which will help things go faster.

Use shift-click to select a large number of files at a time (better than click-and-drag when your Mac is sluggish) and use command-delete to move them to the Trash (same reason).

Hope that's enough.

womanofthehills

(9,202 posts)
4. Thanks everyone!! DU is the best!!
Tue May 1, 2018, 04:51 PM
May 2018

I took Atman's suggestion and opened a finder window so i could pick and choose images. About 80% of the images were from my trash that I have been very lax in deleting. What would cause my trash to all appear on my desktop? Anyway, I will be deleting my trash regularly.

What's a good program to clean up your Mac? I'm running 10.13.4 OS High Sierra but my computer is about 6 yrs old.

Thanks

Tetrachloride

(8,443 posts)
5. Onyx
Fri Feb 15, 2019, 01:10 AM
Feb 2019

I use MacUpdate.com to find proper versions.

Onyx is big. Read carefully.

Don’t choose every option for cleaning, especially cookies.

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