Czkawka is an open-source application, to easily and quickly find duplicate or unnecessary files.
The application is mainly known for its functionality to find duplicate files. Although, as we will see, it has other tools to clean your file system.
Czkawka has been programmed with speed in mind. Thus, it is efficient in searching and finding files that match the search criteria focused on being really fast.
Multiple tools to use:
- Duplicates - Find duplicates based on file name, size, or hash
- Empty folders - Find empty folders
- Large files - Find the provided number of largest files in the given location
- Empty files - Search for empty files on the disk
- Temporary files - Find temporary files
- Similar images - Find images that are not exactly the same (different resolution, watermarks)
- Similar videos - Search for visually similar videos
- Similar music - Search for music with the same artist, album, etc.
- Invalid symbolic links - Displays symbolic links that point to files/directories that do not exist
- Broken files - Files that are invalid or corrupt
- Bad extensions - Lists files whose content does not match their extension
It is available for Linux and Windows operating systems, both in CLI and GUI versions.
In its GUI version, it takes inspiration from the FSlint application for Linux. In general, the interface is very easy to use.
Basically
- We open the program
- We select the folders we want to analyze
- We select the function we want to use
- We click “search”
- We perform the desired actions on each match
Another important point in any application of this type is the number of options available to select the files we want to delete. Here Czkawka behaves properly. For example, we can choose to delete all files in each group, except the most recent, the oldest. We can even filter using a regex.
In short, a simple tool that, in addition to never having to remember how to spell it, is very useful for keeping your files clean.
Czkawka is Open Source, and all the code and documentation is available in the project’s repository at https://github.com/qarmin/czkawka