Getting Started

Find duplicates

The simplest way to use rsdedup is to report duplicates in the current directory:

rsdedup dedup report

Or specify a path:

rsdedup dedup report /home/user/photos

Warm up the cache

For large directories, pre-populate the hash cache first. This makes subsequent operations much faster:

rsdedup cache scan /home/user/photos

Preview before acting

Always use --dry-run before destructive operations:

# See what would be deleted
rsdedup dedup delete --dry-run /home/user/photos

# See what would be hardlinked
rsdedup dedup hardlink --dry-run /home/user/photos

Delete duplicates

Delete duplicates, keeping the oldest file in each group:

rsdedup dedup delete --keep oldest /home/user/photos

Save space with hardlinks

Replace duplicates with hardlinks — all copies still appear as separate files but share disk space:

rsdedup dedup hardlink /home/user/photos

JSON output for scripting

rsdedup dedup report --output json /home/user/photos

Typical workflow

# 1. Warm cache (optional, speeds up repeated runs)
rsdedup cache scan ~/photos

# 2. See what's duplicated
rsdedup dedup report ~/photos

# 3. Preview cleanup
rsdedup dedup delete --dry-run --keep oldest ~/photos

# 4. Execute
rsdedup dedup delete --keep oldest ~/photos