Czkawka vs Duplicate Cleaner

Czkawka is a free tool for locating duplicate and unnecessary files, empty folders, similar images, and related items. Its tools can find duplicate and empty files, temporary and large files, similar videos, and duplicate music. Scans can target user-selected directories and files, with matches determined by file name, size, full-file hash, or a combination of size and name. Features include file preview, automatic selection, folder exclusions, and moving items to the Recycle Bin or Trash. The project provides graphical and command-line frontends, an Android frontend, a reusable core library, and Python bindings. It says the software uses multithreading and caching to help scans and later rescans, and that it has no internet access and collects no user information or statistics. Czkawka is listed for Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows. GTK 12.0 is the final release for that frontend, and no more GTK binaries are planned. Krokiet prebuilt binaries have no mandatory runtime dependencies, although its similar-videos tool requires ffmpeg at runtime.

Duplicate Cleaner finds duplicate files on Windows computers and network drives, including documents, photos, music, and video. Its Regular, Image, Audio, and Video modes identify matches using file content, attributes, or media-specific details. Image Mode can find exact or similar pictures, including rotated or flipped images, and can use image tags. Audio Mode compares similar-sounding or exact audio and audio tags; Video Mode can compare frames, thumbnails, soundtracks, data, and metadata tags. Scans can include local folders and drives, network paths, and portable devices such as smartphones and MP3 players. Pro can scan inside ZIP and other archive formats. After reviewing results, users can delete, move, copy, rename, or link selected files. Protections include folder exclusions, safeguards for system files and folders, and a check that all duplicates in a group are selected for removal. Duplicate Cleaner Free is for personal and home use, not commercial use. The Pro 5 download includes a seven-day trial. The current download supports Windows 11, 10, 8, or 7 and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 or greater.