How to clean up duplicate but unlinked PDF files from your Papers2 library.

readme.md

Papers2 Library Cleanup

For a variety of reasons, my Papers2 library folder (~/Library/Application Support/Papers2) was cluttered with many duplicate papers, generally only one of which was linked to a document in Papers2. Here is how I cleaned it up.

1. From a Terminal, cd ~/Library/Application\ Support.
2. open .
3. Copy the Papers2 folder to the Desktop. This is your backup.
4. In Papers2, cmd+,, select Library, select Add next to "Rename files in library folder as:", and select Separator -> _ then click Apply.
5. Back in your Terminal, find ./ -iregex ".*[^_]\.pdf" -delete
   • If you want to see what's going to be deleted before doing it, run find ./ -iregex ".*[^_]\.pdf"
6. Back in Papers2, remove the _ from "Rename files in library folder as:", and click Apply again.

And thats it.

Thanks for your post. I have tried your solution but Papers2 does not rename the files in the library folder. Have you encounter this issue by any chance?