350 .......Over the years, I've used multiple cloud backup solutions to back up my photos and videos, including OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox. However, switching between these services led to a duplicate file problem I didn't realize was eating up storage space on my drive.When I'd had enough and decided to clean up hidden junk on my PC, I used Czkawka, a duplicate file finder and cleanup utility, and it found over 35,000 duplicate photos taking up a massive 160GB of storage on my drive.Czkawka (pronounced "chkafka," meaning "hiccup" in Polish) is an open-source disk cleanup tool written in Rust. It's designed to find and remove duplicate files, similar images, empty folders, and other unnecessary files that quietly eat away at your storage. Unlike Windows' built-in duplicate finder, Czkawka doesn't just match file names, but also compares actual file content using hash algorithms.What makes it particularly useful for photo libraries is the Similar Images mode. This feature can detect visually similar photos even when they have different resolutions, file names, or compression levels. So if you saved the same photo from WhatsApp, Google Photos, and your phone's gallery, Czkawka will group them together regardless of the slight quality differences between them.Beyond photos, Czkawka can also find duplicate music files by comparing audio content or tags, detect empty folders cluttering your directory structure, and identify temporary files left behind by apps. It's a multi-tool for disk cleanup rather than just a duplicate finder.The app runs entirely offline with no telemetry or data collection, which is a nice bonus if you're cautious about privacy. It's available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, though the macOS installation is more involved and not beginner-friendly.
Installing and using Czkawka
A portable app that requires no installation
Getting Czkawka running on Windows is like installing any app from GitHub. So, head to the Czkawka GitHub repository, click on Releases, and download the Windows GUI archive from the Assets section. Unzip the file, open the extracted folder, and run czkawka_gui.exe to run the portable executable.The app has a macOS-inspired interface with three main windows at the top. In Included Directories, you add the folders you want to scan for duplicates. I added my entire Pictures folder, which included years of phone backups scattered across multiple subfolders. If there are specific folders you want to skip, switch to the second tab and add them as excluded directories.On the left side, you'll see different modes: Duplicate Files, Similar Images, Similar Videos, and Music Duplicates. For my photo cleanup, I started with Duplicate Files mode to catch exact copies, then ran Similar Images mode to find the near-duplicates that hash matching would miss
