How to find large files on a Mac

Work from the top down: look at sizes one folder at a time and go only into the biggest one. In Finder, press Command and J in your home folder, tick Calculate all sizes, switch to list view and click the Size column. In Terminal, one command ranks everything in your home folder by size.

In Finder

1. Open your home folder.
2. Switch to list view.
3. Press Command and J, and tick Calculate all sizes.
4. Click the Size column so the biggest folders sort to the top.
5. Open the biggest folder and repeat.

In Terminal

This prints the size of every visible item in your home folder, smallest to largest:

du -sh ~/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h

du reports disk usage, -s gives one total per item, -h prints readable sizes, and sort -h sorts 900M before 5G. The Library folder is hidden in Finder, which is why it is often the surprise. To look one level down:

du -sh ~/Library/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -8

Find single big files

Spotlight can list every file over one gigabyte in your home folder:

mdfind -onlyin ~ 'kMDItemFSSize > 1000000000'

On the Mac used for the blog post, this found an emulator image and a log file that had grown for months.

Before you delete anything

A big folder is not proof its contents are disposable. Move a file to the Trash first, check you still do not need it, then empty the Trash. If a file might matter, keep another copy. Never delete from system folders. Apple says Trash contents do not free space until emptied, so see empty the Trash safely.

Common culprits

Downloads, old installers, screen recordings, app caches and developer build data. Clear caches one app at a time using clear caches safely. For copies of the same file, see find duplicate files. The whole routine is in the blog post free up space on your Mac without a cleaner.

In the notch

NotchStar’s Disk tool does the same ranking with its Space section, and Find searches files by name. It scans only when you press the button.