Filtering your results

On Files, Largest files and Duplicates, choose Explore in the title bar and use Filter under Filter results in the ribbon. It narrows what the list shows. It does not change what you have ticked, and it does not change what the scan found.

The button and its drop-down

Filter opens a panel holding everything. In Simplified ribbon, open Filter results first, then press Filter.

Control What it does
The text box Narrows the list to rows matching what you type. It filters as you type — there is no Apply button.
File type Narrows to one category — Images, Video, Audio, Documents, Archives or Apps & installers — or back to All types.
Clear filter Removes both halves at once. It appears only once something is set.

Close the panel with Esc or by clicking away. Whatever you set stays set.

While a filter is on, the funnel turns from grey to the accent colour and one or two chips appear beside it — one showing the text you typed, one showing the file type. Clicking a chip removes that half and leaves the other alone. The chips exist so a narrowed list never looks like a broken one: a filter behind a button is a filter you can forget you set.

What you can type

The one rule to remember: a dot means file type; anything else means "appears in the path".

You type You get
invoice Anything with invoice anywhere in its path
.pdf Files of exactly that type, and nothing else
.doc* Types starting with doc — .doc, .docx, .docm
.d?c ? stands for exactly one character
holiday 2024 A space means and — both must match
.jpg,.png A comma means or — either will do
-tmp A leading minus leaves those out
* or *.* Everything, including files with no extension
.* Names that begin with a dot, like .gitignore
*. Files with no extension at all, like Makefile

The drop-down carries the short version under the box: "Use * for any characters and ? for one. Put - before a word to leave it out."

⚠ A comma does not turn a word into a file type. .docx,.doc filters on two types; docx,doc has no dots, so both parts are read as text and it also finds docx-notes.txt. Put the dot in when you mean the type.

What each tab matches it against

Tab The text is matched against
Files, Largest files The file's full path
Duplicates Every member of a group. If any member matches, the whole group is shown

That Duplicates rule matters. A group that is shown is always shown in full, and its file count and size still describe every member — otherwise a two-file group could look like a one-file group, and ticking the only copy you could see would leave you with none.

It narrows what you see, not what you remove

Auto-select ignores the filter completely. Copies are grouped by their contents, not by their names, so a filter can easily hide one member of a group. Choosing which copy to keep over a half-hidden group could tick every copy you have.

One control does follow the filter, and it says so. On Files, the tick in the column header normally reads "Discard all files in this folder"; with a filter on it reads Mark 12 shown files, naming exactly what it will touch. Clearing marks is never narrowed — the same tick always clears the whole folder, because clearing too few would leave files staged for removal under a control that just said they were not.

When nothing matches

The list is replaced by "No matching files" — or "No matching duplicates" or "No matching folders" — with a line naming what you filtered by and a Clear filter button. That is a different state from an empty scan, and it says which one you are looking at.

On the Duplicates tab

Switching the group list to Only fully-marked groups turns the filter off and greys the Filter button out. That view is built a different way and cannot be narrowed, so the button is disabled rather than left to accept input and do nothing.

While a filter is on, the group list header counts both ways — "12 of 3,400 duplicate groups" — and the reclaimable figure below it changes its wording to "1.2 GB reclaimable in all groups". The size still describes the whole session, not the filtered list, and the line says so rather than leaving you to guess.