Viewing disk usage in macOS

07/11/2019

If you’re having trouble finding out where all your disk space on macOS has gone, you may try to search the app store for “disk” utilities. I was surprised to find out that almost every decent looking tool was a paid app (in 2019). Luckily macOS is based on unix and can use tools like ncdu.

brew install ncdu

By default ncdu will scan the home directory, to scan the root directory (may take a couple minutes):

ncdu -x /

You’ll see something like:

   ┌───Scanning...───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │                                                                                                                                                                                                         │
   │ Total items: 12192487size: 290.6 GiB                                                                                                                                                                    │
   │ ...                                                                                                                                                                                                     │
   └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

--- /Users/shanehusson -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   50.2 GiB [##########] /Library
   33.5 GiB [######    ] /Music
   12.7 GiB [##        ] /src
    6.3 GiB [#         ] /.Trash
    5.0 GiB [#         ] /.npm
    1.5 GiB [          ] /Pictures
  945.0 MiB [          ] /miniconda3
  845.6 MiB [          ] /.vscode

Basic usage is through left, right, up, down keys.

HMMMMMMMMmmmmmm

--- /Users/shanehusson/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/TV Shows ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                         /..
   19.2 GiB [##########] /True Detective
   14.0 GiB [#######   ] /Game of Thrones

more info on the man page.