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TUAW's Daily Mac App: GrandPerspective

by Samuel Gibbs Jul 26th 2011 at 3:00PM

GrandPerspective

Finding large space hogging files in a complex file system like that on your Mac can be difficult. GrandPerspective, a small open source program, aims to help you find and remove space wasters quickly and easily.

GrandPerspective first scans a target folder, be it your entire disk or just your iTunes folder for instance. It can then build a treemap based on the file size and type, color coding the files in a user configurable mapping scheme, showing you your file system visually. From there you can identify those files and folders that are taking up the most space.

Once you've found an unusually large file you can find out what it is by hovering over it or clicking it, with file information such as name, size and file type displayed in the right hand draw. You can then either delete that file directly from GrandPerspective (if enabled in the application preferences), or reveal that file or folder in Finder.

You can also zoom the treemap in or out to get more detail, as well as re-scan at any time, either just the folder selected or the whole drive to update for any changes you've made. The color mapping can be changed to color like file types, extensions, names, levels or folders, which makes grouping similar files easy. Filters can also be used to scan your files for all sorts of things like file type, size, name -- you name it, there's a filter available.

If you're looking to free up disk space on your drive, GrandPerspective makes it easier to find unwanted space hogs and is certainly worth the free download.

Thanks to aliasnexus0 for the suggestion.



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Finding large space hogging files in a complex file system like that on your Mac can be difficult. GrandPerspective, a small open...
 

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12 Comments

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judahpeak

i downloaded and installed it, try to run it and it just sits there in the dock. what am i doing wrong??

August 01 2011 at 3:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Zach P.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOO much for this post. I've never used one of these apps before, mainly because I thought I didn't need to. I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try.

Boy was I glad I did, I found a 39GB rendered Quicktime movie (that was nothing but a blank grey screen, 16x9) from FCP, and I have no idea why I had it on there.

Very happy!!!!!!!!!!

July 27 2011 at 1:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
edgardglark

I like GrandPerspecive. As a general purpose treemapping tool (i.e. not just limited to disk analysis), Macrofocus TreeMap (http://www.treemap.com/) is pretty good and is fortunately also available for Mac OS X.

July 26 2011 at 9:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
scamper

I love the idea behind this program. I’m a visual guy, so apps like DaisyDisk and this one have so much promise… until I try actually using them for paring down my drive. For me, as unsexy as it is, nothing beats OmniDiskSweeper. It’s fairly utilitarian in the looks department, but it gives me only what I need: a raw, hierarchal, columnar list of every file in every folder with the size right there next to it. A visualization, no matter how pretty, just isn’t as *useful.*

July 26 2011 at 8:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Samuel McConnell

Looks exactly like WinDirStat for Windows.

July 26 2011 at 5:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RonL

Two words: Space Gremlin

Excellent and the best app of this kind... though it's icon leaves a lot to be desired ;)

I still use Disk Inventory X for a quick look for the simultaneous available free space on numerous partitions.

July 26 2011 at 5:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jyhash

How is this different or better than DaisyDisk? It certainly won't win any design points over DaisyDisk...

July 26 2011 at 5:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vmajestik

It's essentially the same as Disk Inventory X, but since that program was written for PowerPC, it won't run on Lion.

July 26 2011 at 4:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to vmajestik's comment
Christo Is Christo

For a moment, I got confused by your comment and the one above yours... I thought you were saying DaisyDisk was PowerPC, and I was going to tell you to inform my copy of DaisyDisk running on Lion ;D

July 26 2011 at 10:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nicleT

Well, you still give a try to the universal beta version of Disk Inventory X. I work under Lion.

July 26 2011 at 11:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sauri

First thought after looking at the screenshot: "Disk Inventory X".

July 26 2011 at 3:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Turbodog

So it's exactly the same as Disk Inventory X then?

July 26 2011 at 3:27 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
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