

It really doesn’t get any simpler than that because that is all that the app really does. You can also delete those selected files, though this feature is turned off by default. Or if you have a file selected, GrandPerspective can open that file in the default app for that file (so Word for documents, iTunes for audio files, etc.). After selecting a GrandPerspective’s tiled block approachīlock, you can in the “Reveal” in the top of the window to see where it is in Finder. And GrandPerspective adds something very important. If you want more detailed looks at the files examined, you can always zoom in on blocks and then look at those smaller blocks and files. So that things like movies and videos that are all in the same folder or cluster are colored the same. Just hover over that rectangle, and in the bottom left-hand corner, the name of the file, the size, and its location on the hard drive will be displayed. The bigger the rectangle, the more space that particular file is taking up. When it’s done, it displays in the files in colored and sized boxes within the window. After selecting what you want scanned, GrandPerspective quickly begins scanning your hard drive for all the files and folders within your selection and how much space they are taking up. When you open the app, it asks you to select a folder or hard drive that you wish to scan. GrandPerspective is a simple little tool that couldn’t be more straightforward. I had never really used hard drive visualization tools before, but I decided to use one, and the first app that came to mind was GrandPerspective. After cleaning out caches, deleting apps, and searching the many of the ins and outs of my Mac’s hard drive, I still have a lot of hard drive space being taken up. I don't think you will be disappointed.Sometimes I look at my Mac’s hard drive and wonder what is taking up so much space. When you hover over a box, the interface tells you what the path is, how big the file is, etc.Īnyway, Grand Perspective is a great little program that does it job well. Wow, that one app is bigger than I thought. The size of the little boxes represents the size of the files. The smaller boxes are the folders or files on the disk. Often it is a folder that needs a little more scrutiny. The app presents the user with a large rectangular box which respresents the container that is being analyzed. And it is solid now: I haven't had any trouble in years and years. Now the app is a simple, solid tool, that I only use occasionally, but it absolutely indespensible when I need it. In the early days, there were a few bugs, and I mention this only because the app was so useful, one would put up with a few crashes because Grand Perspective was still the best way to get the job done. In all this time, it has been the best way to figure out what is filling up a disk.
#Grandperspective macos mac os
I have used this app for many years on various Macs with various versions of Mac OS X. Drawing and scanning are carried out in background threadsĪ solid little tool that has stood the test of time.Save, reload and view again at any time.Save results of disk scanning operations: Support for hard-linked files and folders: Twin or duplicate a view for different displays of the same data.Refresh or rescan a view to compare results before and after clean-up.Exclude files and folders when scanning a disk.Filters and filter tests are automatically stored in the user preferences.Construct filter tests based an item's name, path, size, file type, hard-link status, and package status.Traverse up and down the folder hierarchy.Color files by their: name, extension, file type, parent folder, top folder, level in the folder hierarchy, creation time, modification time, or last access time.Files in the same folder appear together. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file's size. It can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space.ĭisk usage is visualised using tree maps. GrandPerspective is a small utility application that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system.
