Alternatives
Looking for a Czkawka alternative?
Czkawka is free, open source, fast, and finds more kinds of clutter than anything else in this category. Skimrr is not a broader tool: it is a narrower one, built for photographs and for the moment just before you delete them.
What Czkawka does well
It cleans far more than photographs
Duplicates, similar images, similar videos, empty folders, broken symbolic links and temporary files. As a general disk cleaner it has no equivalent at this price, which is none.
Free, open source, cross-platform
macOS, Windows and Linux, nothing to pay and nothing hidden. The source is public and actively maintained.
It is quick
Written for throughput. We have not benchmarked it against Skimrr and will not claim a figure either way.
Where Skimrr is different
Removals can be undone
Czkawka's deletions are not reversible from inside the app. Skimrr moves files to a local trash you can browse, and puts any of them back into their exact original folder with one click.
Built for someone looking at pictures
Groups appear as photographs, a day at a time, with the suggested keeper marked and the reason for that suggestion stated in plain words. Czkawka's interface expects a certain comfort with technical tools.
It also flags the shots that missed focus
A sharpness pass, ranked against the folder being scanned rather than against a fixed threshold, because detail density differs enormously from one library to another.
Side by side
| Czkawka | Skimrr | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, Linux | macOS and Windows |
| Price | Free | One-time, $19.99 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Scope | Files of every kind | Photographs only |
| Reversible removals | No | Yes, internal trash |
| Finds blurry photos | No | Yes |
Checked against each maker's own site. Prices and features change: tell us at [email protected] if a line here has gone stale.
Stay with Czkawka if
you want one tool for every kind of clutter on the disk, if you are comfortable in technical software, or if you would rather pay nothing and read the source. Skimrr does none of that: it will not find your empty folders, your broken links or your duplicate videos, and it is not free once you want to move files.
Questions
- Is Skimrr faster than Czkawka?
- Unknown. The two have never been benchmarked against each other, and a number invented for a comparison page would be worth nothing.
- Does Skimrr clean other file types?
- No. Duplicates and out-of-focus photographs, and nothing else.
- What happens to the files Skimrr removes?
- They move to a local trash with a manifest, restorable file by file to their original folder. Only emptying that trash deletes anything.