MAC TERMINAL FIND FILE SIZE HOW TO
MAC TERMINAL FIND FILE SIZE MAC

It's better to start off at a place like your Home folder or maybe your Documents folder. So starting at the top level isn't very good because you're going to get System files, Library files, Application files, things like that. You want to start off at a good location for finding files. In this case I'm in the Users Folder/MacMost. Now when you're working in Terminal you are always at a certain location. So when you launch the Terminal you get a window that looks like this. It can be faster to do both of those things using the Terminal. So while you can use the Finder to find large files it's a little more difficult to find large folders. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters.

MAC TERMINAL FIND FILE SIZE HOW TO

Let me show you how to use the Terminal to find the largest files and folders on your drive. Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with. For today’s lesson, typing ‘ man du‘ will give you more information about the ‘du’ command than you ever wanted.Check out Using Terminal to Find Large Files and Folders at YouTube for closed captioning and more options. Tread thoughtfully and deliberately, and always remember to use the ‘ man‘ command to get details if you’re unsure. The Terminal can be both handy and efficient, not to mention fun. “/Volumes/Back Seat Betty/usr/bin/du” -sh * My hard drive is named “Back Seat Betty” because I name all my drives after Miles Davis songs, so for me that command would be: If your hard drive name contains a space, it’s safer to wrap the whole thing in double quotes as I have just to make life easier. You’d modify the above command and add “/Volumes//usr/bin/” to the beginning of the statement, where is the name of your hard drive. Thankfully, your Mac’s normal hard drive has this, and it will work even if it’s in read-only mode. You’ll have to point to a different volume that contains it. Unfortunately Recover Mode is a little different because the ‘du’ command isn’t included in the skeleton system you’re running. du will take them all.įor anyone doing this from the Terminal of a normally-booted Mac, this will work exactly as you see above. * – this is the filename target, and the asterisk means “everything that doesn’t start with a period.” You could specify a single directory here or a list, or individual files.Because we’re using two switches, s and h, we can combine them together with ‘ -sh‘ -h – this switch tells ‘du’ to output the sizes in ‘human-readable’ format.-s – this switch tells ‘du’ to show you one line per filename specified.So you understand what you just typed (or are about to type): By issuing ‘du -sh *’ in the Terminal I can see the sizes of all my files and folders Just invoking ‘ du‘ will give you too detailed of a list (and not the answer you want), but with a couple of switches and a filename target you’ll get what you’re looking for. From the Terminal, type: du -sh * and that will give you a listing of your files and folders with their sizes.

The command you’ll want to use from the Terminal is ‘ du‘ which is short for, “display disk usage statistics”. I occasionally have to backup data from Terminal in Recovery Mode due to filesystem damage or other issues. I’m wondering if you guys know of any way to see the size of a whole directory while in the Terminal?” Answer:

MAC TERMINAL FIND FILE SIZE MAC

I would like to know how much space I may need when trying to pull data from a volume on a Mac to an external device. Mac Geek Gab listener Daryn writes, “I recently have been trying to figure out if there’s a way to see the size of a directory when using Terminal in Recovery Mode.

Mac terminal find file size