— go to the documentation home page
MediaFlow documentation

Duplicate Files

Find byte-for-byte identical files in two stages — a survey by size and type, then a hash — so same-size files are never called duplicates on size alone.

Available onPro

Documents version1.5.1

Last updated

On this page

Uploading the same image twice is easy to do and hard to notice. Duplicate detection finds files that are byte-for-byte identical.

Where to find it

Media → MediaFlow → Tools, in the Duplicate files card.

How to run it

  1. Open Media → MediaFlow → Tools.
  2. Press Scan for duplicates.
  3. Let it run. The scan works in batches and reports progress, so it does not time out on a large library.

When it finishes the card reports sets found and the space held by the extra copies.

How it decides

The scan runs in two stages, and the distinction matters:

  1. Survey — group attachments by file size and MIME type. This is cheap and narrows the library to candidates.
  2. Confirm — hash each candidate and compare.

What it does not do

Before you delete a copy, check where each one is used — see Where media is used. Two identical files can be referenced by different pages, and deleting the wrong one breaks a page that looked unrelated.

Limitations

  • Only exact, byte-for-byte matches are found. A resized, re-saved or re-compressed version of the same photograph is a different file and is not reported.
  • The result is a snapshot. Uploading more files does not update it — run the scan again.

Frequently asked questions

Will this delete my duplicates?

No. It reports them. Deleting is yours to do, in the Media Library.

Does it find visually similar images?

No. It finds identical files. A different crop, size or compression level is a different file.

Is it safe to run on a big library?

Yes. It runs in batches sized to finish inside a normal request, and it can be run repeatedly.

Can I run it without a licence?

No. Duplicate detection is part of Pro.