We download things, we copy files, we create emergency backups. Somewhere along the line we forget about the various copies of files we have floating around, eating drive space and putting a strain on the resources in the bargain. Besides, there are those times you will do a spotlight search for a file, and work on an older version of the file, messing up your projects in the bargain.
Decloner finds clones
Across the many apps being released on the Mac platform, Decloner is one that caught my attention. Created by indie developer Gleb Dolgich, Decloner weeds through any specified folders or your entire hard drive, finding bits of information that match each other. “Decloner uses SHA-1 to determine if files are identical. File names don’t matter — only the content is compared.” says the app description. The app also makes sure duplicates are worth checking out, hence speeding up the process. In any case, the app is only as good as its ability to find duplicate content quickly, as we shall see.
First run: the Downloads folder. There’s millions of app downloads in there, many of which I know I’ve downloaded a second time. Decloner goes though the folder, slowly but steadily. It takes a while (about a minute) to finish, but upon completion it shows a full list of duplicates organised by size. The user interface is easy to follow, but you do have to click the flippy, then checkmark one of the files, and move on to the next duplicate. Decloner supports Quick Look so you can instantly see a preview of the file you’re cleaning, and at the end of the process, it moves the files to the trash so you can always get things back.
To test that it’s not just comparing filenames, I renamed a iPhone-update.ipsw duplicate to Cake.ipsw. It found the duplicates. I even changed it to Cake.zip and it will found the duplicate. Then I opened up an png image in Preview and saved it as a jpg. Didn’t catch it (it’s not supposed to). Saved an RTF file as TXT, didn’t catch it.
There were times when Decloner presented a single file as a duplicate, which left me a little confused as deleting either of the files left me with none. Thankfully it doesn’t permanently delete anything. Nevertheless this is a serious bug and needs to be fixed soon. I also found the lack of ‘Scan entire system’ option or scanning multiple folders a bit unnerving, since I couldn’t compare files across hard drives.
The last clone
I’ve been using the app for these past few weeks, and it has definitely cleaned out a bunch of files. I even had a TV shows folder lying inside my Documents folder I had no idea about! At $20 a license, if you find yourself with a bunch of duplicates hogging up precious disk space (MacBook Air users!), you might want to give Decloner a spin.
