qarmin / Czkawka

Czkawka (tch•kav•ka (IPA: [ʈ͡ʂkafka]), "hiccup" in Polish) is a simple, fast and free app to remove unnecessary files from your computer.

Features

• Written in memory safe Rust
• Amazingly fast - due to using more or less advanced algorithms and multithreading
• Free, Open Source without ads
• Multiplatform - works on Linux, Windows and macOS
• Cache support - second and further scans should be a lot faster than the first one
• CLI frontend - for easy automation
• GUI frontend - uses modern GTK 3 and looks similar to FSlint
• No spying - Czkawka does not have access to the Internet, nor does it collect any user information or statistics
• Multilingual - app support multiple languages
• Multiple tools to use:
  • Duplicates - Finds duplicates based on file name, size or hash
  • Empty Folders - Finds empty folders with the help of an advanced algorithm
  • Big Files - Finds the provided number of the biggest files in given location
  • Empty Files - Looks for empty files across the drive
  • Temporary Files - Finds temporary files
  • Similar Images - Finds images which are not exactly the same (different resolution, watermarks)
  • Similar Videos - Looks for similar visually videos
  • Same Music - Searches for music with the same artist, album etc.
  • Invalid Symbolic Links - Shows symbolic links which point to non-existent files/directories
  • Broken Files - Finds files with an invalid extension or that are corrupted

How do I use it?

You can find the instructions on how to use Czkawka here.

Some helpful tricks you can find here

Installation

Installation instructions with download links you can find here.

Compilation

If you want to try and develop Czkawka or just use the latest available feature, you may want to look at the compilation instruction.

Benchmarks

Since Czkawka is written in Rust and it aims to be a faster alternative to FSlint or DupeGuru which are written in Python, we need to compare the speed of these tools.

I tested it on a 256 GB SSD and a i7-4770 CPU.

I prepared a disk and performed a test without any folder exceptions and with disabled ignoring of hard links which contained 363 215 files, took 221,8 GB and had 62093 duplicate files in 31790 groups which occupied 4,1 GB.

I set the minimal file size to check to 1KB on all programs.

I used Mprof for checking memory usage of FSlint and DupeGuru, and Heaptrack for Czkawka.

In Dupeguru I enabled checking images with different dimensions to match Czkawka behavior. Both apps use caching mechanism, so second scan is really fast.

Similar images which check 10949 files that occupied 6.6 GB

Similar images which check 349 image files that occupied 1.7 GB

Comparison to other tools

Bleachbit is a master at finding and removing temporary files, while Czkawka only finds the most basic ones. So these two apps shouldn't be compared directly or be considered as an alternative to one another.

Other apps

There are many similar applications to Czkawka on the Internet, which do some things better and some things worse.

• DupeGuru - A lot of options to customize, great photo compare tool
• FSlint - A little outdated, but still have some tools not available in Czkawka
• Fclones - One of the fastest tools to find duplicates, it is written also in Rust but only in CLI

Contributions

Contributions to this repository are welcome.

You can help by creating:

• Bug reports - memory leaks, unexpected behavior, crashes
• Feature proposals - proposal to change/add/delete some features
• Pull Requests - implementing a new feature yourself or fixing bugs. If the change is bigger, then it's a good idea to open a new issue to discuss changes.
• Documentation - There is an instruction which you can improve.
• Translations - Instruction how to translate files is available here

You can also help by doing different things:

• Creating text articles - LinuxUprising or Ubunlog
• Adding Czkawka to repositories - Alpine Linux or NixOS or OpenMandriva
• Creating videos - First Video or Tutorial Spanish
• Recommending it to others

Name

Czkawka is a Polish word which means hiccup.

I chose this name because I wanted to hear people speaking other languages pronounce it, so feel free to spell it the way you want.

This name is not as bad as it seems, because I was also thinking about using words like żółć, gżegżółka or żołądź, but I gave up on these ideas because they contained Polish characters, which would cause difficulty in searching for the project.

At the beginning of the program creation, if the response concerning the name was unanimously negative, I prepared myself for a possible change of the name of the program, and the opinions were extremely mixed.

License

Code is distributed under MIT license.

Icon was created by jannuary and licensed CC-BY-4.0.

Windows dark theme is used from AdMin repo with MIT license.

The program is completely free to use.

"Gratis to uczciwa cena" - "Free is a fair price"

Thanks

Big thanks to Pádraig Brady, creator of fantastic FSlint, because without his work I wouldn't create this tool.

Thanks also to all the people who create patches for this program, make it available on other systems, create videos, articles about it etc.

Donations

If you are using the app, I would appreciate a donation for its further development, which can be done here.