Find duplicate files, space hogs, and look-alike photos on Windows — and clear them safely. Everything goes to the Recycle Bin, so nothing is ever gone for good.
Every Windows PC quietly fills up with the same files, over and over. Browsers save report (1).pdf next to report.pdf. Phone imports re-copy whole albums. Messaging apps hoard every photo you view. A typical three-year-old machine hides 5–30 GB of exact duplicates — plus a few forgotten giants and thousands of near-identical photos.
Windows has no built-in way to find any of that. Quickening does — and it's built for people who are (rightly) nervous about letting an app delete their files.
The whole pitch: it's free, it's fast, and it's safe. Removals go to the Recycle Bin with one-click Undo, system folders are hard-blocked, and the source is right here for you to read. For an app that deletes things, you shouldn't have to take anyone's word for it.
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Exact, content-verified copies — not just matching names. Identical files are grouped together with a recommended keeper (newest, oldest, or shortest path — your call). There can be only one. |
The biggest space hogs above a size you pick with a slider — biggest first, even the one-of-a-kind ones. Sometimes a single forgotten video outweighs a thousand duplicates. |
Photos that look alike but aren't identical — resized, re-compressed, or lightly edited — found by perceptual matching and shown with a match percentage. Never auto-selected; you decide. |
The safety story is the point, not a footnote:
- Recycle Bin, always. Nothing is permanently deleted in normal use — ever. Removals use the same Windows
IFileOperationAPI Explorer uses, so Restore works exactly as you expect. - One-click Undo. Right after any removal, one click puts everything back where it lived.
- System folders are hard-blocked.
C:\Windows,Program Files, andProgramDataare never scanned and never deletable — enforced in code, not a setting you can flip off by accident. - Warns on risky files. VM disks, databases, installers, and other easy-to-regret file types are flagged and need an explicit extra confirmation.
- Re-checks at delete time. Anything that changed since the scan is skipped, not removed by surprise.
- Respects cloud & network files. Online-only placeholders and network drives are handled with care.
- Free, Windows 10 & 11, installs just for your user (no admin rights needed), and updates itself automatically.
- Official downloads come only from quickening.app and this repo's Releases. A copy from anywhere else may not be what it claims.
Heads-up: Windows will be cautious the first time
Because Quickening isn't code-signed yet, the first launch shows a blue "Windows protected your PC — unknown publisher" SmartScreen notice. That's Windows being careful about apps from small developers, not a sign anything's wrong. Click More info, then Run anyway. Quickening installs only for your user account and never needs administrator rights.
Yes, it's a Highlander reference. In the film, the Quickening is the surge of power an immortal absorbs when only one remains — "there can be only one." Which is exactly what a duplicate finder does: among a pile of identical copies, one survives and the rest are retired. And "quicken" also just means to bring back to life and speed up — which is what clearing the clutter does to a sluggish drive.
The full story is on the blog.
Quickening is source-available — the complete source is public so you can read it, audit it, and verify exactly what the app does with your files.
- The app (compiled, from quickening.app or Releases) is free for anyone, any purpose, including at work — governed by the EULA. The two rules: don't redistribute it, and don't charge people for Quickening itself.
- This source is under the PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 license: read it, study it, build it for personal noncommercial use — but no redistribution, no derivatives, no commercial use. Distribution stays official.
- The Quickening name and logo are trademarks and aren't covered by the source license.
Want to do something the license doesn't allow? Just ask: support@quickening.app — the answer is often yes.
See also: PRIVACY.md · THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md · SECURITY.md
Prerequisites: .NET 8 SDK, the Windows App SDK workload, Windows 10/11, and Visual Studio 2022 (or the CLI). The app targets win-x64.
git clone https://github.com/tvirelli/Quickening.git
cd Quickening
dotnet build Quickening.sln
dotnet test # the safety-critical logic is covered by the test suiteTo run: open Quickening.sln in Visual Studio 2022, set Quickening.App as the startup project, and press F5 — or dotnet run --project src/Quickening.App.
Under the hood: C# / .NET 8 + WinUI 3 (native Fluent design, direct access to the Windows shell for Recycle Bin, tray, and Explorer integration), BLAKE3 for fast content hashing (a match is as good as byte-for-byte), and SQLite (WAL mode) for the scan cache and history. The exact-duplicate engine is a four-stage funnel — group by size → partial hash → full BLAKE3 hash → optional byte-for-byte paranoid check — so most files are ruled out without ever being fully read.
src/
├── Quickening.Core/ # scanning, hashing, similarity, safety rules, SQLite, Recycle Bin — no UI, fully testable
└── Quickening.App/ # WinUI 3 app: scan setup, results grid, filters, charts, media viewer, tray
tests/ # xUnit — the deletion & safety logic under test
Found something that could put a user's files at risk? Please report it privately — see SECURITY.md. Do not open a public issue for vulnerabilities.
Free forever. Coffee optional. ☕ If Quickening saved you some space (and a headache), a tip keeps it free and getting better.
Made by one person who also had 14,000 duplicate photos. · © 2026 Quickening · quickening.app