RollScrub finds duplicate photos and videos across every folder and drive you point it at — and compares every single byte before it calls two files the same. You see each pair side by side. Nothing moves until you say so.
Most duplicate finders score how similar two photos look, then ask you to trust the score. RollScrub never does that. Files are narrowed down cheaply, then the survivors are compared in full — so a pair is either identical or it is not shown.
Files that differ by a single byte in length cannot be duplicates. Anything with a size all to itself is discarded immediately.
Each remaining file gets a signature read from its head and tail — enough to separate unrelated files that happen to share a size.
Every still-matching cluster is compared byte for byte. Files that only looked alike are split apart here and never reach you as a pair.
Your renamed original wins over the camera's untouched filename, and anything that looks like a copy loses. You can always override it.
The same shot ends up in a Lightroom library, an export folder, an old backup, and an external drive. Point RollScrub at all of them at once and it finds the copies between them — not just within each one.
Pick as many folders or volumes as you like in one pass. A photo in your Pictures folder and the identical file on an external drive come back as one pair, with the full path of each so you can tell at a glance which copy is which.
Every pair opens side by side at full size, with dimensions, capture date and file size for each. Two clips play together, frame for frame, so you can confirm a video match with your own eyes rather than a checkmark.
Keyboard-first, because a real library means thousands of these decisions.
Previews come from the embedded image inside a raw file rather than a generic document icon, so two ARW or DNG frames are actually distinguishable. Video thumbnails are pulled a second into the clip, past the fade-in.
Scanning is read-only. Removal goes to the Trash. Every step is reversible.
A file is compared against the copy being kept one more time immediately before it moves — not just at scan time. If they no longer match, it stays put.
Removals go to the Trash and stay recoverable in the Finder until you empty it yourself. RollScrub never unlinks a file outright.
If the copy that justifies a removal has gone missing, the duplicate is left exactly where it is and reported — never removed on the strength of a stale scan.
Photos that live in iCloud but aren't downloaded are skipped rather than quietly fetched — or removed from your other devices behind your back.
Files inside an .fcpbundle are legitimately identical to originals elsewhere. Descending into one and "deduplicating" it corrupts the library, so RollScrub doesn't look inside.
The command-line tool writes a manifest of everything it set aside, and puts every file back where it came from with a single --undo.
For drives with hundreds of thousands of files, or a sweep you want to run on a schedule. It writes a text report and a CSV, and with --move it sets duplicates aside in a review folder inside whichever drive each was found on — so nothing has to cross a volume boundary, and nothing is deleted.
Scanning, reviewing and the full report cost nothing and always will — you can see exactly what RollScrub found before deciding whether it's worth anything to you.
No — and that's deliberate. A re-exported or re-compressed version is a different file, byte for byte, so RollScrub won't claim it's a duplicate. It finds exact copies: the same file that got duplicated into a second folder, a backup, or a drive.
If you want a tool that guesses at visual similarity, there are several. This one is built on the opposite promise.
It reads whatever folders you choose, including the originals inside a Lightroom library if you point it there. It never writes to a catalog or database — removals go to the Trash, and you should re-sync your catalog afterwards the way you would after any change made outside the app.
Final Cut Pro libraries are skipped entirely: their internal media is meant to be duplicated, and pruning it corrupts the library.
Nothing is deleted. Files go to the Trash, where you can put them back from the Finder. The command-line tool goes further — it moves files into a review folder and writes a manifest, so a single --undo puts every one of them back exactly where it was.
Most of the work is thrown away cheaply: only files sharing an exact byte size are ever opened, which on a real drive eliminates the overwhelming majority before anything is read. Full byte-for-byte comparison then runs in parallel across cores, and only on the handful of genuine candidates.
No. RollScrub is distributed directly and notarized by Apple, which is what lets it scan any drive you choose without the sandbox restrictions a Mac App Store build would impose on reaching your external volumes.