General

The general tab offers access to a range of settings that affect the general behavior of Duplicate File Detective.

Startup

Start with a blank project - Always start up with a blank project.
Re-open last project - Each time the program starts, re-load the last project that you worked with. This is the default.
Open the following project - When the program starts, open the specified project file.

Follow file system linkages - Causes file system scanning to traverse symbolic links, mount points and directory junctions. Disabled by default.
Skip offline folders and files - Skips placeholder files and folders whose contents live in cloud storage (e.g. OneDrive files that are online-only). Recommended, as scanning such files would otherwise trigger their retrieval from the cloud.
Enable preview window - Controls whether the Preview pane renders file contents. When disabled, only the file icon is shown.
Enable image comparison window - Controls whether the Compare Images pane loads thumbnails. When disabled, the pane reads nothing from disk.

Show top N entries in top file type and owner graphs - Indicates how many "Top N" items should be displayed within the Top File Types and Top Owners graph views. Default value is 10.

Never ask if changes to the current project should be saved - Whenever a project is closed (e.g. when shutting down Duplicate File Detective or starting a new project), you'll be prompted to save any unsaved changes. Use this setting to avoid such prompts. Disabled by default.
Show desktop notification window when duplicate scan completes - Causes a small notification window to appear in the corner of the Windows desktop when a duplicate scan completes. Notifications are never shown if the current duplicate file scan is canceled by the user.
- Only if one or more events occurred during scanning - Restricts the notification to scans that recorded at least one event (e.g. a skipped folder or access error), keeping quiet on fully clean scans.

Show warning when result report filtering is applied through indirect means - Some right-click menu functions may apply filtering to the current duplicate search result view. When this option is enabled, users will be notified when such filtering has been applied.
When saving projects, warn the user that search results won't be included - Shows a notice (when saving projects) indicating that report data isn't saved together with project definition (.dfd) files.
Warn about search path conflicts - If this option is disabled, you'll no longer be notified when search path conflicts exist in your project. Rather, search paths will be normalized and de-duplicated automatically when the project is executed.