RED+ is a fork of Jonas John's RED
RED+ was created by Robert 'NotBob' Bookerby
It has had some new features added, some UI tweaks, been made fully portable (it uses a local config file rather than one stored in some back-water of %appdata%) and had the name matching routines completely rewritten in order to allow more sophisticated matching.
RED+ finds, displays, and deletes empty directories recursively below a given start folder. Furthermore, it allows you to create custom rules for keeping and deleting folders (e.g. treat directories with empty files as empty).
I've been using versions of the original RED for many years, and this enhanced RED+ since July 2024 with no significant issues. But I offer no guarantee that it will work for you on your system.
- Simple user interface
- Shows empty directories before deleting them
- Supports multiple delete modes (including Delete to recycle bin)
- Allows whitelisting and blacklisting of directories by using filter lists
- Can detect directories with empty files as empty
- Windows 7 or later
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8
- There is no installer. Just unzip into a folder of your choice and run it.
- If the config file (RED+.cfg) isn't found it will prompt you to create one:
- Portable Mode stores the config in the same folder as the executable
- %APPDATA% stores the config in the a subfolder of Windows %APPDATA% (non-portable)
- If you place RED+ in a protected folder (such as 'Program Files' or 'Program Files (x86)') then Windows will prevent writing of the portable config file. Select %APPDATA% instead.
You are welcome to contribute code, translations, or anything else :)
Here are some tasks you can help with:
- Look at open issues and try to fix or implement them
- Also look at issues for the original RED
- Fix typos and general wording
- Optimize user interface
- Documentation
The first version of RED was created by Jonas John around 2005.
Since then a small team of contributors helped to fix bugs and add new features.
In July 2024 Robert 'NotBob' Bookerby created RED+ using the core code of RED.
In June 2025 RED+ was made available on GitHub
25.3.0.0 (2025 December)
- Save Prompt was not being actioned on program exit
- Reset Settings/Filters not being actioned correctly
- Reset Settings no longer resets filters
- Change how Explorer Integration is handled.
- Read the help file for more info (Settings - Advanced Settings - Windows Explorer Integration)
- Prevent exit if Search or Delete is active
- Updates to help documentation
25.2.0.0 (2025 November)
- Improve command line parsing
- Updates to basic help
25.1.0.0 (2025 November)
- Added basic help documentation (help\index.htm)
- NOTE: Incomplete and very much a work-in-progress
- Added microseconds to display of runtime after a search
- Disable search related buttons when not on search tab
- Added -autosearch command line switch
25.0.1.0 (2025 November)
- Fixed issue with Last Used Directory not being restored on program load
25.0.0.0 (2025 June)
- The 1st release of RED+, which is based on Jonas John's RED 2.3.0 beta
- Completely rewrote the directory and file name matching routines allowing the use of an extended syntax for more sophisticated matches
- Added a new directory filter to allowing specifying that a directory is never to be treated as empty but still check any sub-directories
- Added a dedicated grid for the display & editing of filter rules
- Tweaked the UI layout and some of the icons
- Settings load/save replaced with custom routine allowing truly portable use
- The settings file has the same name as the executable but with an extension of '.cfg'
- If you want the settings saved to the %appdata% folder then delete the .cfg file and RED+ will prompt for the location next time it is run.
- Added the foundations for translations using industry standard .po files
Original RED
- See original RED for earlier releases
Third-party components
- File system calls are powered by the AlphaFS library
Icon sources
- Nuvola icons (GNU LGPL 2.1. license)
- NuoveXT icons (GPL license)
- famfamfam silk icons (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license)
- FatCow free-icons (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license)
RED is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.