No matter how careful you are with file management, if you use your computer long enough, duplicate files will accumulate. Though duplicate files don’t harm anyone, if you don’t keep an eye, they might become hard to keep track of and consume a lot of hard disk space. For example, maybe you’ve downloaded the same file multiple times, duplicate email attachments, duplicate backup archives, multiple instances of shared files, duplicate photos and videos, etc.
Fortunately, you can easily find the duplicate files and delete them to regain the lost disk space. In this quick and easy tutorial, let me show the steps to find duplicate files on Windows 11 and Windows 10 using free software. Let’s get started.
Before You Begin
- Windows has no built-in options to scan and find duplicate files. So, you are required to install a free software—Auslogics Duplicate File Finder.
- You need administrator rights to install the software.
- The steps below are tested to work on Windows 11 and Windows 10.
Steps to Find Duplicate Files on Windows
- Get the Auslogics from this page.
- Double-click the downloaded file and install Auslogics.
- Press the Start button.
- Search and open “Auslogics Duplicate File Finder“.
- Select the drives to scan in the middle panel.
- Select the “Look for all file types” in the right panel.
- Click the “Search” button.
- The app will scan the selected drive(s).
- It will automatically list all the duplicate files.
- (optional) You can select the duplicate files and click the “Delete selected files” to delete them.
Detailed Steps (With Screenshots)
First, go ahead and download Auslogics Duplicate File Finder from this page. After downloading, double-click the installer file and click the “Agree and Install” button to install Auslogics software.
Once the software is installed, press the “Start” button, search for “Auslogics Duplicate File Finder“, and click the “Open” option.
In the main window, select the drives you want to scan. Next, select the “Look for all file types” option in the middle panel. Alternatively, select the “File types” you want to scan in the middle panel. In my case, I chose all four drivers and file types.
After that click the “Search” button.
Important note: By default, the application ignores files smaller than 1 MB. If you want to scan them also, click the “Next” button instead of “Search” and uncheck the “Ignore files smaller than” checkbox.
As soon as you click the “Search” button, the application starts the scan. Depending on how many files you have and the selected file types, the scan can take a while. Once the scan is complete, the application will show a list of all the duplicate files found in the main panel.
Once you have the duplicate files list, you have two options. That is, either ignore them or delete them.
To delete the duplicate files, select the checkboxes next to the file names and then click the “Delete selected files” button. This action will delete the files.
Note: You can find the deleted files in your recycle bin.
That is all. It is that simple to find duplicate files in Windows 11 and Windows 11.
Wrapping Up — Finding Duplicate Files on Windows
As you can see, while Windows has no built-in option, you can use the free software I’ve shown in the tutorial to quickly and efficiently find all the duplicate files on Windows. To make the whole process a bit faster, make sure to narrow down the search scope to a specific drive or folder and file type. For example, if you want to scan for duplicate photos, you should select the drive where the files are saved and set the file type to “Images”.
If you have any questions or need help, comment below. I’ll be happy to assist.
Image credit: Christiaan Colen
