■ xplorer² v4.2 released with artificial intelligence for photo cleanup

You find artificial intelligence popping up everywhere nowadays, so why not in a file manager too? Using machine learning algorithms, xplorer² teached itself to recognize bad quality photos (blurred, shaken, too bright or dark etc). It also learned to recognize pictures that are very similar to each other (albeit not exactly duplicate). Using these 2 new tools you can examine your old photo collection and quickly find those that are not worth keeping — and delete them to free up your disk space.

There will be a separate blog article explaining the new AI-driven photo cleanup tools, but quickly I can mention that to detect blur you use the new file attribute Blur available through <Alt+K> (Select columns menu command). For JPG photos it will show a number, which is over 100 for bad quality pictures (probabilistically). To detect similar pictures, first you put all your JPG files in a scrap container, then use Tools > Find similar photos menu command and they will be grouped by similarity. Then you can choose which ones you don't need and remove them. The command is similar to the duplicate files checker, but as you can see it detects pictures that are slight variations of a scene too!

Figure 1. similar picture detection tool

Other additions of note include: (see the changelog for the full list)

Change file dates. xplorer² could touch dates (fix them at a set time/date) for long time, but now it can also set one file date to another (e.g. set the modification date to the date a picture was taken), and shift the modification or creation date forward or backward by a fixed amount relatively to the existing date. Use Actions > Change dates menu command.
Taskbar jump list. If you right click on the xplorer² taskbar icon, you will see a list of the 10 most frequently used folders. Clicking on these icons will open xplorer² at the respective folder location — in case the other 100 bookmarking features in xplorer² are not enough for you <g>
Cloud storage. xplorer² is aware of OneDrive and DropBox files on demand (available online only) and will not unnecessarily start a download unless you tell it to. Browsing casually a cloud folder will not cause a download for previews etc, and neither will a file search. Online-only files are distinguished by the Offline file attribute, the Availability status detail, and the link icon overlay.
Hybrid fast search (ultimate edition). Windows search index doesn't allow searches for all file attributes, and neither supports regular expressions in queries. In the past such searches would be done in "slow motion", whereas now xplorer² ultimate will use the search index for whatever it can, and complement for the slow properties, leading to an overall search acceleration. This is especially useful if you combine text content searches with regular expressions for filenames.

Upgrade information

Version 4.2 is a free upgrade for most people that already own v4.x licenses. A small exception is people who got a v4.0 key as a free upgrade using the "free upgrades for a year" policy. So if your unlock key is dated before 1 February 2018 (check your About dialog), then you'd need a new key, but you may be able to get one with a discount. On the other hand if you've already bought a v4.x key or you own the free lifetime upgrades cover, you don't have to pay again.

Please use Help > Check for updates menu command or the equivalent from ribbon's File leftmost tab to get the new version. If you don't have xplorer² installed try the download page for your free trial.