Help / Troubleshooting
I moved duplicates to quarantine and cannot find the files
You cleaned up some duplicate copies, went looking for them on disk, and they are not where they used to be. They have not been deleted. They were moved, and this article says exactly where.
The short answer
Quarantined copies sit at the top of the music folder you added to the library, in a folder named .aj-quarantine. They are not in the album folder they came from, which is why they look missing. Nothing was deleted, and you can move them back yourself in File Explorer.
Where the files are, exactly
For each music folder you added to the library, a cleanup creates this:
<the folder you added>\.aj-quarantine\<batch>\<the rest of the original path>\<filename>
So if you added D:\Music, everything lands under D:\Music\.aj-quarantine, however deep the file was. The batch part is a number made from the time the cleanup ran, so separate cleanups sit in separate folders. Everything below it is unchanged: a file from Rock\Loveless\01 Only Shallow.flac is still at that path, under the batch folder.
Three things worth knowing:
- The move never crosses drives. A quarantined copy is always on the same volume as the folder it came from, so a file from a NAS is still on the NAS.
- It is an ordinary folder. The name starts with a dot, but you can open it in File Explorer like any other, and sorting by name puts it near the top.
- The app deliberately ignores it. Library scans and the folder watcher both skip it, so quarantined copies never drift back into your library on their own.
Getting them back from inside the app
The restore button is in the Quarantine tab of the duplicate review, which opens from a Review duplicates button. Open Library Health and look at the Duplicate tracks card. If it shows a count, press Review duplicates, switch to the Quarantine tab, and press Restore on the batch you want. Each batch shows its file count, total size and the date it was moved.
If it shows a tick instead, the cleanup left it nothing to offer, so the card has no Review duplicates button. The library view's duplicate bar has its own Review duplicates button while it shows a duplicate count (see Why do I see two different "duplicate" numbers?). If you cannot find a button, restore by hand instead.
When a restore does run, the files in the batch go back where they came from and are re-indexed, so they reappear in your library. If a different file now sits at that exact path, the restored copy lands beside it with (restored) in its name rather than overwriting anything. Anything that cannot be moved back is left where it is, and the tab says how many were not restored.
Getting them back by hand
Because the layout mirrors your library, a manual restore is a plain file move. Open the batch folder, select everything inside it, except an .aj-manifest.jsonl file if there is one (it is the app's own record of the batch, so leave it where it is), and move it into the music folder that contains .aj-quarantine. Windows merges it back into the matching folders. Then run Rescan Library so the library picks them up again.
One thing to tidy up afterwards. Unless the app's data was cleared, the batch is still listed in the Quarantine tab, because that list is a ledger the app keeps rather than a reading of the disk. The rescan gets you back to it: the restored copies count as duplicates again, so the card has a number and Review duplicates opens. Press Remove from list on the batch, then confirm. It deletes no files: it takes off the list the copies it cannot reach in the batch folder, both those it finds missing and those it cannot check, for example because the drive or share did not answer or .aj-quarantine is gone. Anything it does find stays listed, so you can Restore it.
If the quarantine folder was deleted by hand
If you deleted .aj-quarantine yourself, or a file manager or sync tool did, those copies are gone in the ordinary way and the app has no undo. On a local drive, check the Windows Recycle Bin first. A network share usually has no recycle bin at all, which is exactly why a cleanup moves rather than deletes. The batch stays listed in the Quarantine tab, and Purge keeps it listed while .aj-quarantine is missing, because the app cannot tell a deleted quarantine folder from a share serving an empty folder while its disk is not mounted. Press Remove from list on the batch instead: it takes the copies off the list and touches no files. The tab will then say it could not check those copies, for the same reason, even though you know they are gone. Like Restore, it is in the Quarantine tab, and "Getting them back from inside the app", above, says when you can open that.
Your library itself is not damaged. The copies you kept are untouched, they still play, and the play counts, history and playlist places from the removed copies were merged onto them during the cleanup.
Files you do not remember quarantining
You may find a batch folder named wav-leftovers. That one is not from a duplicate cleanup. At the start of every scan, the app moves aside decoded WAV files that a ripping tool left beside the raw stream they came from, for example a track.dts.wav next to a track.dts. It only does this when the source file is right there beside it, and it moves rather than deletes.
These are not listed in the Quarantine tab. If you want one back, move it somewhere outside your library folders. That check runs before each scan looks at anything, so while the raw stream sits in its old spot, putting the WAV back beside it only sends it to wav-leftovers again.
Still cannot find them
A batch whose drive or share is not connected, whose music folder was renamed, moved or deleted, or whose .aj-quarantine folder was deleted, stays listed after you press Purge, and Quarantine: how removed copies are kept, restored and purged explains how to clear it. If a purge leaves a batch listing files that are nowhere on disk, press Purge once more: a check that was running during the first purge can put a row back. If that does not clear it, Remove from list takes off the copies it cannot reach, without touching any files. If .aj-quarantine is missing and you did not delete it, tell us about it. Use the in-app option to report a problem, and mention the batch and folder you looked in. See Is this a bug? How to report it.
For the full picture of the holding area, see Quarantine: how removed copies are kept, restored and purged.