Duplicate Cleaner

Nothing is worth doing manually these days. Especially if it involves rifling through your folders, going back and forth in order to clean up any duplicate files you might have. Out of the many software designed to do this for you, Duplicate Cleaner is one that stands out in the crowd.

The program has little requirements in terms of disk space and it does something quite useful in return. The package is under one Mb large and, during the installation process, you'll barely notice the progress bar. No need to register or anything. Just run the program.

The interface is very easy to use. Although it has a few menus, the actions you find here can generally be made using the large, coloured buttons. Duplicate Cleaner lets you get straight down to business. No need to create a new project ore something of the sorts, but you can export or import file duplicate lists.

The duplicate eliminating process is fast and simple. On the lower part of the window you'll find two lists. Click and drag a folder from the left list to the right. The program will search for files that are the same as the contents of this folder. Before scanning, you can check a few parameters like same content, same file name, artist and so on. You can include or exclude key words through a filter, also found on the main window. Basically, you have quite a number of options at your disposal. Once you've made all your calibrations, click the scan button on the toolbar found on the upper part of the window. The search will go fast and once it's done, the results will be as clear as day. Assuming the program finds duplicates, these will be shown in groups that are coloured differently so you can better see which are the duplicates. You'll find information about their size, paths, creations date and others.

The toolbar from the top of the window contains all the actions you need. Once you've scanned, you can hit the selection assistant which will help you select certain files. No need to manually check the duplicates, just use the assistant to select one file in each group, the oldest or newest file in each group and so on. When you've made your selection, click the file removal button on the toolbar. Before the actual erasing starts, you'll be given some options to rename the files, move or copy them to a folder or create hard links. If you choose to delete them, you can check or uncheck if you want to send them to the recycle bin. Also, you have the options to remove the empty folders they leave behind.