Skip to content
ToolsVerse

Cookie settings

Optional analytics help us understand which pages and tools are useful. If you allow them, we use Google Analytics. Your files are never included, and every tool works the same if you decline. Cookie policy

Duplicate File Detector

Scan a folder or a batch of up to 5,000 files and group exact duplicates by SHA-256 hash, then download the list as CSV or JSON. Nothing gets deleted.

Browser tool

Files

Choose files or a whole folder. Duplicates are found by content (SHA-256 of the bytes), never by name; hashing runs on your device in chunks so large files are fine.

About Duplicate File Detector

Finding files that are identical in content regardless of what they are called, which is the only comparison worth making — copy-2.jpg and holiday.jpg may well be the same photograph, and two files called invoice.pdf may not be the same invoice. Free to run online, with no registration step. The files are hashed on your own machine, so not one of them is uploaded.

How to use Duplicate File Detector

  1. Add the files to compareEverything stays on your device; the comparison happens in the page.
  2. Read the groupsFiles with identical content are grouped, whatever their names.
  3. Keep one of each and check before deletingThe tool identifies duplicates; deciding which copy to keep is yours, and nothing is deleted for you.

Identical content, not similar content

Comparison is by content, so a match means the files are byte-for-byte the same. Two versions of a photograph that differ by a single edited pixel, or the same image saved twice at different quality, are genuinely different files and will not be grouped. That is the correct behaviour — near-duplicate detection is a different and much fuzzier problem.

What it does not do

  • Nothing is deleted or moved. This reports what it finds and leaves the decision with you.
  • A large set of large files is bounded by browser memory.
  • Re-encoded or re-saved copies are not duplicates by this definition, however similar they look.

Duplicate File Detector: questions people ask

Will it find photos that look the same but are not identical?
No. It matches identical content. Two exports of the same photograph at different quality settings are different files and are reported as such, which is accurate even though it may not be what you hoped.
Does it delete anything?
Never. It identifies groups and leaves every file where it is. Deleting is a decision that should be made deliberately, with the list in front of you.
Can it find duplicate files on a Windows PC without installing software?
Yes. Switch the input to "A folder" and pick a folder, and every file inside it, up to 5,000 files of any type, is hashed and grouped by identical content. It works on files you select from the computer, so it cannot reach into Google Drive or other cloud storage on its own.

Questions about ToolsVerse itself — privacy, cost, what happens to your files — are answered in the frequently asked questions.

Related tools

The tools people most often need alongside Duplicate File Detector.

Can’t find the tool you need?

Tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll consider adding it.

Request a tool →