Before you get here
Review Selection is the screen that lists exactly what you marked, with paths and previews, before any of this runs.
The five operations
DuoBolt never removes anything on its own. When you have marked files and pressed Review Selection, you choose what happens to them.
There are five operations. Only one removes a file for good.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| Operation | What it does | Getting it back |
|---|---|---|
| Move to Trash | Hands the files to the system Trash or Recycle Bin | From the Trash, like anything else |
| Move to Archive… | Moves them into a folder you pick, keeping their folder structure | They are still on disk, where you put them |
| Copy to… | Copies them somewhere else and leaves the originals alone | Nothing was removed |
| Replace with clone | Makes each one an APFS clone of the copy you keep (macOS) | Nothing was removed |
| Delete permanently | Removes them without the Trash | Only from a surviving copy |
On Windows the first one reads Move to Recycle Bin, and the rest of the app says Recycle Bin wherever this page says Trash.
The app says so before Delete permanently runs:
Removed at once, without the Trash. Recoverable only from a surviving copy.
Choosing one
Section titled “Choosing one”The button on the Review Selection screen is a split button. The face runs the operation it names; the chevron beside it opens the others.
The menu is ordered Trash, Delete permanently, Archive, Copy, with a rule drawn where the consequence changes. On exact duplicates on a Mac’s APFS drive, a fifth row follows: Replace with clone. Whichever you pick, the footer restates it: a count, a size, and what the size means — to trash, to delete, to archive, to copy or to free.
Move to Trash
Section titled “Move to Trash”The default, and the one to use unless you have a reason not to.
Files go to the system Trash on macOS or the Recycle Bin on Windows, through the OS’s own API rather than by moving them to a folder that looks like one. They keep their “put back” behavior, so they restore from the Trash as usual.
On a drive with no Trash
Section titled “On a drive with no Trash”Many network shares and some external drives have no Trash. Move to Trash does not delete files there for good: they stay where they are, and the confirmation says how many. Delete permanently is what removes them, and only if you pick it.
A folder that a removal leaves empty goes to the Trash too, with whatever system files it still holds, rather than being deleted.
In the Photos library
Section titled “In the Photos library”A photo from a library scan does not go to the system Trash: it goes to Photos’ Recently Deleted, through Photos, where it stays 30 days. Its edit, a Live Photo’s video and the RAW of a pair go with it — they are one photo to Photos — and the confirmation counts them before you agree. Restoring is Photos’ own: open Recently Deleted and put it back.
Move to Archive…
Section titled “Move to Archive…”Moves the files into a folder you choose, and rebuilds their folder structure
underneath it. A file at Photos/2019/June/DSC_0042.jpg lands at
<archive>/Photos/2019/June/DSC_0042.jpg, not loose among a thousand others.
Two details:
- Nothing is ever overwritten. If a file of that name is already at the
destination, the incoming one gets a suffix derived from its source path —
DSC_0042 (duobolt-a1b2c3d4).jpg— so two files from different folders can share a name without one eating the other. - Across volumes it copies, verifies, then removes. Moving to an archive on another disk keeps the original until its copy there has been verified. It frees space on the source and uses it on the destination, and the confirmation says so before it runs.
Copy to…
Section titled “Copy to…”Adds copies somewhere else; the originals stay where they are.
This is the operation for “I want these gathered together”, not for cleaning up — it frees no space at all, and the footer will tell you it is about to copy rather than to free.
Replace with clone
Section titled “Replace with clone”For exact duplicates on an APFS volume, macOS only. Each marked copy is replaced by an APFS clone of a copy the group keeps, on the same volume. The file stays where it was, with its own name, dates, permissions and extended attributes; only where its blocks live changes, and the disk stops paying for it twice. Nothing is removed, so the footer’s figure reads to free.
Just before replacing a file, DuoBolt hashes it and the copy it clones from again, and goes ahead only if they are still identical. The clone is built beside the file and renamed over it, so an interruption leaves either the original or the finished clone.
The confirmation says how many marked files it leaves out, and why: those that already share their storage with the copy you keep, and those with no copy left on their own disk to share with, since a clone cannot cross volumes. See APFS clones.
Delete permanently
Section titled “Delete permanently”Removes the files without the Trash.
The confirmation dialog counts, before you commit, how many of the selected files have no other copy left behind:
3 files have no other copy left behind and could not be restored afterwards.
That number is the one to read. Deleting one of two copies is recoverable in the ordinary sense — the other copy is still there, and DuoBolt can rebuild the deleted one from it even after the Trash has been emptied. Deleting both is not.
Checked before each file
Section titled “Checked before each file”The selection was made against what the scan saw, and the disk can change after that. So before acting on a file, DuoBolt checks that it is still the file the scan found — same size, same modification date — and leaves it alone if it is not. A copy whose kept twins have been deleted in the meantime is left alone too: removing it would leave nothing behind.
What is written down
Section titled “What is written down”Every operation, whichever you pick, is recorded before the first file moves. The record names each file, its size, its content hash, where it went and whether it succeeded — which is what makes Review & Restore possible afterwards, and what means a crash halfway through still leaves an accurate account of what had already happened.
Stopping one
Section titled “Stopping one”A long operation can be stopped. The button says Stop after this file, and the note under it explains why:
Stopping is safe: it finishes the file it is on.
Cancellation is checked between files, never during one, so a stopped operation never leaves a half-written file behind.
If it went wrong
Operations history and restore keeps every operation and can put the files back.