To help you get the most out of your mac!
In: How-To
1 Feb 2007If you are like me, occasionally (actually most of the time in my case) you run out of disk space on your hard drive and you wonder what is eating up so much space. Well in order to make some space in your hard drive you need to delete some files.
I am going to show you a quick way to find the files that take the most space on your machine. Here is how we begin:
1. First of all, we need to find the biggest files in your computer and start by deleting the ones that are no longer important.
In order to do this let’s use one of the great and powerful features of Tiger called “Smart Folders“.
Smart folders in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4 or better) is a kind of virtual folder that gives a way to save your searches. If for instance you need to find something on your computer on a regular basis, instead of repeating your search over and over, you can save your search query on Mac OS X. This is saved as a Smart Folder. Your smart folder then updates automatically every time relevant things change in your machine. At any given time you can modify your saved search query and it updates instantly.
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This being said, let me show you how to use the smart folder feature to quickly find the biggest files in your computer:
If your smart folder does not appear on the finder, you can find it in your home directory under Library>Saved Searched and you can drag it on the finder left column to make it appear there.
The beauty of this is that you can view your smart folders in icon view or list view. And at any time you can modify your search parameter and it will instantly update. In my case I chose two queries. One that will find all the files which size is between 100MB and 1GB, and another one that will show me all the files over 1GB. You can also modify the location where you want the search to be performed.
Now anytime you need to find the biggest files in your computer, just click on your smart folders and you are ready to decide which files to delete. And if someone ever tells you again that Mac isn’t cool, don’t feel bad to reply: are you out of your mind?
The outside of the box said "Windows base machine or better", so I bought a Mac.
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9 Responses to How To Find The Largest Files On Your Hard Drive
kl
February 27th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
even better – just use Disk Inventory X.
Mac Thinker
February 27th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Yes Disk Inventory X is really nice but it is not free. For those who want to exploit the power of their mac free of charge, I still recommend smart folders…
Paul
February 28th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
WhatSize is a nice free app that finds the largest files on your computer for you. I’ve been using this for a while now to free up space.
http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/
Paul
Mac Thinker
February 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
What is the point of WhatSize when you can actually see the size of folder and subfolders right from the finder.
All you have to do is:
1- Open a finder window. Select the list view(as opposed to icon or column view).
2- Then go to View (on the application menu bar on the top), choose View Options
3- From the view option windows check at the bottom the checkbox for Calculate all sizes
4- To make sure that it apply to all windows and that you don’t have to go through this process again, also select the radio button for All windows on the top.
5- And you are doing! You can now close the view options window and enjoy seeing the sizes of files and folders in the finder’s list view. You can also sort by size!
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
TheMacThinker
Paul
February 28th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
I’ve tried the method you mentioned above (before and after reading your post,) and as far as I can tell, I still have to peek into each folder to see where the big files are. The nice thing about WS is that it gives you a top level view of which folders contain the largest files and then drill down by file size from there. Could also just be the way my brain works that the report makes more sense to me in WS.
Thanks again,
Paul
Mac Thinker
February 28th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
That’s right you are a bit limited in that regard with the finder, it only helps seeing file and folder sizes within a folder.
As long as what size is free it might by worth a try
accommodatingly » Blog Archive » wrestling with technology
April 10th, 2008 at 9:01 am
[...] and Windows XP on my machine. I barely use them, but it’s useful to have around. I just found this nifty article that tells you how to find the biggest files on your Mac. Time for some spring cleaning! Sphere: [...]
Finding Big files on the Mac | Tongfamily.com
September 18th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] MostOfMyMac.com » How To Find The Largest Files On Your Hard Drive If you are like me, occasionally (actually most of the time in my case) you run out of disk space on your hard drive and you wonder what is eating up so much space. Well in order to make some space in your hard drive you need to delete some files. I am going to show you a quick way to find the files that take the most space on your machine. Here is how we begin: # First of all, we need to find the biggest files in your computer and start by deleting the ones that are no longer important. In order to do this let’s use one of the great and powerful features of Tiger called “Smart Folders“. So from Finder, choose File/New Smart Folder and then choose “” on the right and then “” again and choose Other… and look for Size and pick greater than 1GB and choose Save. Name this “1GB+ Files” # This appears on the left bar of Finder and when you click, it search for a 1GB files # [...]
Bruce
May 29th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Why don’t the smart folders allow you to create a column such as file size within it? Then it would actually be helpful. It would really be nice if you could actually know which were your worst culprits.