Finding specific things

Finding every image and video

Updated 2026-07-31 · 3 min read

Media accumulates in more places than anyone expects: Photos, Downloads, Messages, AirDrop, screenshots and old project folders.

By kind, in Finder

⌘F → + → Kind → Image (or Movie). Kind matches the file's type rather than its extension, so it catches HEIC, RAW and formats you would not think to list.

By content type, in the Terminal

mdfind "kMDItemContentTypeTree == 'public.image'" | wc -l
mdfind "kMDItemContentTypeTree == 'public.movie'"

By extension, exhaustively

find ~ -type f \( -iname "*.jpg" -o -iname "*.jpeg" -o -iname "*.heic" \
  -o -iname "*.png" -o -iname "*.raw" -o -iname "*.dng" \) 2>/dev/null

Where media hides

• Photos library — inside the package, named by UUID
• Messages — ~/Library/Messages/Attachments
• Mail — inside the Mail container
• WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack — their own container folders
• Screenshots — Desktop by default
• Old project folders — video projects keep full-resolution originals

Four of those six are inside ~/Library, which is why "find all my videos" via Spotlight returns a fraction of what you have.

The large ones

find ~ -type f \( -iname "*.mov" -o -iname "*.mp4" \) -size +500M 2>/dev/null \
  -exec du -sh {} \; | sort -hr

Video is almost always the answer to "what is filling my disk".

Common questions

Why does Finder's Kind filter find more than searching *.jpg?

Kind uses the file's real type, so it matches images with wrong or missing extensions.

Where are Messages attachments stored?

~/Library/Messages/Attachments, inside the Library folder Spotlight excludes.