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DuoBolt

History and restore

DuoBolt keeps two logs: one of the scans you ran, and one of the operations you performed. The second one can undo itself.

Scan History

Section titled “Scan History”

What you searched or compared, where, and with which settings.

Scan History listing 277 scans, filtered to the last 30 days across Duplicates, Similars and Sync. Rows give the time, the kind, the folders searched, what was scanned and the result — wasted space for duplicates, a count to review for similars, and for a sync between Client Work and Client Work Dupe the number of differences. Repeated rows carry a Repeated ×2, ×4 or ×13 chip. The top row is expanded into its setup recap: folders, size range, extensions and a matching threshold of 14, with Run again beside it.

Rows are grouped under Today, Yesterday, and then by date, and can be filtered by kind (All / Duplicates / Similars / Sync) and by age (All time / Today / 7 days / 30 days / 12 months). Those ages count whole days back from this morning rather than a rolling window, so Today never drags in half of yesterday.

Each row records the setup it used — folders, size range, extensions, options, for Similars the threshold and group cap, and for Sync the two folders and the direction — so a scan can be understood months later without guessing. Run again repeats it exactly.

Identical scans collapse into one row marked Repeated ×4 rather than filling the list. A sync’s comparison is listed with the rest, its result the number of differences it found.

Operations History

Section titled “Operations History”

Everything DuoBolt has moved, deleted, archived, copied or cloned, including what a sync did.

Operations History listing 106 operations, with filters by kind — All, Duplicates, Similars, Sync — and by action across All, Trashed, Deleted, Archived, Copied and Cloned, and Clean restored in the header. Rows give the time, the action, what was touched and where it went: Deleted from Photos, 3 photos · 1 group → Recently Deleted, in Photos, 611.0 KiB removed; two Copied rows from a sync into /Volumes/Archive/Client Work and Client Work Dupe, 10.4 MiB and 1.7 MiB copied; three Cloned rows from Duplicates, 14.5, 15.1 and 8.7 MiB freed; and Deleted rows from Similars, each freeing a few hundred KiB.

Rows can be filtered by where they came from (All / Duplicates / Similars / Sync) and by action. Each row gives the date, the action — Trashed (Recycled on Windows), Deleted, Archived, Copied or Cloned — what it touched, and a figure that says what it means: freed where the disk got the space back, removed where the files went to a Trash or to Recently Deleted and the space is still taken until that is emptied, copied for a copy. A sync’s copies and removals are listed here too, which is how, on a Mac, a file a sync replaced comes back.

Rows carry a Recovered chip once their files have been put back. Clean restored, in the header, clears those entries in bulk, since they describe nothing that is still true.

The action on the right depends on what was done:

  • Review & Restore for anything that moved files away
  • Review archive to open what an archive operation produced
  • Reveal copies for a copy, which removed nothing and so has nothing to undo

Review & Restore

Section titled “Review & Restore”

This is the screen that puts files back.

Review & Restore for a trash operation from Duplicates, trashed today at 19:18, with Select all restorable in the header. The left pane groups the trashed files under their original folders — Client Handbook.pdf under Client Work Dupe/Archive 2024, Client Handbook (1).pdf under Client Work Dupe/Downloads, checked — each marked 6 sources available. On the right, What comes back lists the size, the modified and created dates and the permissions, each marked will be restored, and Rebuilt from lists six surviving copies, each with a byte-identical chip and a button to reveal it. The footer reads 6.9 MiB selected, 1 file, beside Restore Selected, its tooltip giving the shortcut Command Return.

For each file it tells you whether it can be restored, and from where:

  • {n} sources available — DuoBolt has a byte-identical copy to rebuild from
  • Already in place — the file is back, nothing to do
  • No surviving copy — it cannot be restored from within DuoBolt

The detail pane splits into What comes back and Rebuilt from, listing size, modified and created dates, permissions and tags, each marked will be restored. Where the source is byte-identical, it says so.

Select what you want and press Restore Selected.

What cannot be restored

Section titled “What cannot be restored”

Three cases, each with its own explanation on screen rather than a generic failure:

  • A copy operation. It left the originals where they were, so there is nothing to put back.
  • A dry run. Nothing was moved.
  • An operation that moved no files.

How restore works

Section titled “How restore works”

DuoBolt does not rely on the Trash. When you remove duplicates it records, per group, both the files it acted on and the ones it kept — and a restore rebuilds from a kept copy, verifying it by content hash.

That is why “no surviving copy” is a real state: if you deleted every copy of something, there is nothing left to rebuild from, and DuoBolt says so.

Metadata comes back too. Modification and creation dates, permissions, the read-only flag and extended attributes are captured before anything moves and reinstated on the way back.

Preventing it instead

Protected folders stop files being selectable in the first place.