# How to find the biggest folders on your Mac with NotchStar > The Space section measures your home folder and ranks folders by size. Click one to look inside, show it in Finder, or move it to the Trash. Canonical: https://www.notchstar.com/help/find-biggest-folders-notchstar/ Last updated: 2026-11-04 Published 2026-11-04. To find what is taking space, open the Disk tab, pick **Space** and press **Measure home folder**. NotchStar sizes every item in your home folder and lists them largest first. Click a folder to look inside it and repeat until you find the cause. ## Steps 1. Open **Disk**, then **Space**. 2. Press **Measure home folder**. Rows appear as each item is measured, and the list keeps sorting itself. 3. Click a folder to open it. The path shows at the top, and the chevron goes up one level. 4. On any row, the magnifier icon shows it in Finder and the trash icon moves it to the Trash. 5. Press **Rescan** after changes to measure again. ## What the numbers are Sizes are the space allocated on disk, summed over everything inside. Symbolic links are not followed, so a link does not count the same data twice. The total of the current folder shows on the right. ## What to expect On many Macs the biggest item is the hidden Library folder. Its Caches folder is often most of that. Go in one level at a time. Moving a folder such as Library itself is refused by the safety check, which only accepts things inside folders such as Caches, not the folders themselves. See [is Disk cleanup safe](https://www.notchstar.com/help/is-notchstar-disk-cleanup-safe/). ## Limits - It does not scan outside your home folder. - It shows one folder at a time rather than a map. - On a big home folder it takes a while. See [why a scan is slow](https://www.notchstar.com/help/why-notchstar-disk-scan-is-slow/). The [Disk feature page](https://www.notchstar.com/features/disk/) lists the other sections. The same idea with Terminal commands is in [the guide to freeing space without a cleaner](https://www.notchstar.com/blog/free-up-space-on-your-mac-without-a-cleaner/). ## Quick answers. ### Does it draw a treemap? No. It shows a ranked list of the items in one folder at a time. If you want a visual map of everything, a dedicated disk analyzer does that better. ## Keep reading. - [Disk space, duplicates, apps and cleanup](https://www.notchstar.com/features/disk/): See free space, find big folders, duplicates and app leftovers, compress media and clean caches from your Mac notch. Everything goes to the Trash. - [Why a NotchStar Disk scan can be slow](https://www.notchstar.com/help/why-notchstar-disk-scan-is-slow/): Scans read real files: sizing folders, hashing duplicates and recompressing media all take time on big libraries. Here is what each one does. - [Is NotchStar Disk cleanup safe?](https://www.notchstar.com/help/is-notchstar-disk-cleanup-safe/): Disk only moves things to the Trash, only inside your home folder and app bundles in /Applications. It refuses the home folder itself and system paths. - [How to find what is filling your Mac, and free space safely](https://www.notchstar.com/blog/free-up-space-on-your-mac-without-a-cleaner/): Find what fills your Mac with Finder and Terminal, learn which folders are safe to clear, and what to leave alone. Commands tested, with a 20 minute routine. ## More in Disk and storage. - [What the NotchStar Disk scan finds](https://www.notchstar.com/help/what-notchstar-disk-scan-finds/): The Overview scan finds app caches, logs, Xcode build data and downloads untouched for 90 days. It lists them and removes nothing until you choose. - [Is NotchStar Disk cleanup safe?](https://www.notchstar.com/help/is-notchstar-disk-cleanup-safe/): Disk only moves things to the Trash, only inside your home folder and app bundles in /Applications. It refuses the home folder itself and system paths. - [How the NotchStar Disk Trash step works](https://www.notchstar.com/help/notchstar-disk-trash-not-permanent-delete/): Disk moves items to the Trash and never deletes for good. Space only comes back when you empty the Trash yourself in Finder. - [How NotchStar finds duplicate files](https://www.notchstar.com/help/find-duplicate-files-notchstar/): Duplicates compares file contents, not names, across six folders. It skips files under 1 MB and hard links, and keeps the oldest copy of each set. - [How to remove an app and its leftovers in NotchStar](https://www.notchstar.com/help/remove-app-leftovers-notchstar/): The Apps section lists apps with the caches, preferences and logs they leave in Library. Remove sends the app and those files to the Trash. - [How to compress large videos with NotchStar](https://www.notchstar.com/help/compress-large-videos-notchstar/): Compress finds photos over 2 MB and videos over 50 MB, recompresses them, and keeps the result only if it is under 90 percent of the original size.