How to find the biggest folders on your Mac with NotchStar
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
- Open Disk, then Space.
- Press Measure home folder. Rows appear as each item is measured, and the list keeps sorting itself.
- Click a folder to open it. The path shows at the top, and the chevron goes up one level.
- On any row, the magnifier icon shows it in Finder and the trash icon moves it to the Trash.
- 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.
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.
The Disk feature page lists the other sections. The same idea with Terminal commands is in the guide to freeing space without a cleaner.
