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DuoBolt

Your first scan

Ten minutes, and you can undo all of it. Pick a folder you know, scan it, remove something, and put it back.

The welcome dialog on first launch, over the blurred Find Duplicates setup screen with nothing picked yet. It names DuoBolt — find what's twice, keep what matters — and lists byte-exact duplicate detection, configurable scans, undoable Trash, Archive, Copy and delete, and two Pro features: Similars and AI Curation. Try Pro free for 7 days sits above Buy a license, with a note that DuoBolt keeps working free with some limits after the trial.

Pick the right engine

Section titled “Pick the right engine”

DuoBolt has two, and they answer different questions.

Find Duplicates

Files that are byte-for-byte identical. Documents, downloads, music, video, backups. There is a right answer and DuoBolt gives it.

Similars

Photos that look alike — bursts, exports, re-saves. A judgement, so you get the reasoning and the final say.

Start with Find Duplicates.

Run it

Section titled “Run it”

  1. Choose a folder you know well

    Downloads is the classic first scan: full of repeats, and nothing in it is irreplaceable. Resist the urge to point DuoBolt at your entire home folder on the first run — a smaller scan is easier to judge.

  2. Leave the defaults alone

    The defaults skip system files, hidden files, hidden folders, and anything under 64 KiB. Every one of those is there to keep noise out of your first result. What each one does, when you want to change it.

  3. Press Find Duplicates

    Progress runs through Scan → Prehash → Hash → Finalize. Most of the time is the last two, and most files never reach them.

  4. Read the top of the list

    Groups are ordered by recoverable space, so the first few rows are where the disk space actually is. The header states the whole scan: 412 groups · 1,286 files · 38.4 GiB reclaimable.

  5. Mark one group

    Right-click it and choose Keep Newest File. Everything else in that group is marked — marked, not removed. More ways to select.

  6. Review, then Trash it

    Press Review Selection. Check the paths, then choose Move to Trash — the reversible one. Confirm.

Before the scan that matters

Section titled “Before the scan that matters”

Two things worth setting up first.

Protect what must not be lost. Protected folders make files unselectable — the checkbox refuses rather than warning you afterwards. Originals, deliverables, the master copies.

Understand the number. On macOS, some identical files share storage; deleting them frees nothing, and DuoBolt says so rather than promising space it cannot deliver. See APFS clones.

Then try the photos

Section titled “Then try the photos”

Once duplicates are done, the leftovers are usually photos that are nearly the same — the same shot exported twice, the same burst of twelve.