Reveal Hidden Folder Sizes in macOS Finder With These Tricks

[MacRumors]

When using macOS Finder in List view, you'll see the sizes of individual files – but not folders.
Instead, folders show a pair of dashes (--) in the Size column. macOS skips calculating folder sizes by default to keep List view performance fast, especially in directories with many nested files. But if you want to keep an eye on folder sizes in certain locations, or even globally, there are a few ways to do it. Here's how.

What if you want to use List view and still keep an eye on the size of a handful of folders in a specific location – in Documents, for instance, or in a directory synced to a cloud storage service? Or what if you have a super-fast SSD that can handle the pressure of calculating the size of lots of folders on the fly? Thankfully, there are several ways to make Finder show folder sizes, even in List view.

Enable Calculate All Sizes

Open the folder in question, select View ➝ Show View Options from the menu bar or press the keys Command+J, and check Calculate All Sizes. Finder will now remember your viewing preference for that particular location only.

Turn On Preview Panel

If you're looking for a more global solution for keeping tabs on folder sizes that will work in any Finder view mode, you might consider enabling the Preview panel. To do this, open a Finder window and select the menu bar option View ➝ Show Preview, or press the keys Shift+Command+P.

In the Preview panel, the size of the selected folder always appears immediately below the folder name. If this is the only folder information you want to see in the Preview panel, you can select the menu bar option View ➝ Show Preview Options and uncheck all other metadata options.

Use Get Info

Of course, you may find that relying on the Preview panel to keep a check on individual folder sizes isn't an ideal use of Finder window space. This is where the menu bar option File ➝ Get Info (or key combo Command+I) can come in helpful. Opening a separate Get Info panel lets you see the size of the item in question, regardless of whether it's a file or a folder.

The downside? Each Get Info panel is static and specific to the item selected. Opening several at once can clutter your desktop, since each new window stays open until manually closed.

Use Inspector for Live Folder Info

Fortunately, this inconvenience can be easily solved: Click File in the menu bar and hold the Option key, and Get Info will turn into Show Inspector. Unlike a Get Info panel, the Inspector panel is dynamically updated and will always display information for the active Finder window's currently selected file or folder – including, of course, its size.

In summary, for casual folder-size checking, use the Preview panel. For detailed or multiple folders, enable Calculate All Sizes in View Options. And if you need real-time updates without clutter, use Show Inspector.

Article Link: Reveal Hidden Folder Sizes in macOS Finder With These Tricks

 

[abatabia]

Very helpful. Thank you!

 

[guttbinder]

Update: Whoops! I posted this before reading the section after “the downside…”

Prepare to have your mind blown my friend…

CMD+Option+i



Now whatever finder items you select, single or multiple, it will show you all the info in total without having windows. As you select or deselect items… the info window changes dynamically.

 

[madrag]

Great tips, thanks! (in these cases I already knew and use all).

Please also share the tip to show hidden files (command + shift + period), this will help so many people!

 

[goodthymes]

The Live Folder info from using Inspector is a good one to know. Thank you! Another really nice article 👍

 

[macbookj0e]

Thanks for these “how to” articles, very useful and welcomed!

 

[tonmischa]

It is important to know, that "Calculate all sizes" is not always showing the correct size.
When you change something inside a folder, the Finder has to recalculate the contents, but in the meantime is still showing the "old" value.
Finder usually indicates an "outdated" folder size by using a grey font (instead of black), but you can't rely on that either.
Recalculating can take a long time, especially if you have thousands of files nested inside folder. ( = your home directory.)

TL;DR:
Even if the folder says "0 KB", it is not guaranteed that it is really empty!
If you absolutely need reliable real-time info, use the Inspector instead.

 

[Binarymix]

Finder needs to be totally rebuilt. It can be sluggish, even on the newest computers.

It could use an interface refresh as well.

That’s probably coming with AI addition in the future.

 

[jimmysalg]

Awesome article many thanks.

 

[Astuces iOS]

Thanks… this might help me 😀

 

[fontman]

Yes, this is a very useful feature and I've used it for many years. It's been in the Mac OS for as long as I can remember over 20 years. One of the issues of the past is when you use this feature and turned it on it potentially could slow things down as it calculated each folder file size. I don't know if that's such a big impact these days but down in version nine and older, it would certainly impact performance of the machine while it was counting the size of the folder. One of the tricks that I use is if I have a special large folder that I don't add to too often I just add the size of the folder to the subject name, which works really good.

 

[maxoakland]

This is a great article. I didn’t even know about the preview options window

 

[ss2cire]

Great tips, thanks! (in these cases I already knew and use all).

Please also share the tip to show hidden files (command + shift + period), this will help so many people!

Wow, this has blown my mind, I consider myself a power user (Edit: also I'm a developer) and I've never known this shortcut existed, I've been using TinkerTool for years, to enable/disable this. Though I will still keep using it as it does have other hidden system preferences to change.

@madrag thank you so much for pointing this out. 🤯

 

[t0rqx]

Another great article. Love it!

 

[LlamaLarry]

I've always had Calculate All Sizes enabled and it used to work pretty quickly on older macOS, but now large folders (like Applications) never seem to calculate for me.

 

[Tofupunch]

Love articles like this that help me squeeze more out of my Mac. Thanks!

 

[atonaldenim]

you are blowing my mind right now. I had no idea this is possible! so useful!

 

[theorist9]

Or if you've got a parent folder with a bunch of subfolders, and want a single list showing all their sizes, you can use this command in Terminal:

du -h -d1 XXX

where XXX is the path to the parent folder.

E.g., to check the sizes of all the folders you see in Documents, it would be:

du -h -d1 ~/Documents

~ is the shorthand for your Home folder
-h means "human-readable"
-d1 means check to a depth of 1, i.e., just the folders right under the parent folder. If you want to go deeper, then you can use -d2, etc.

If you have a lot of large subolders, it can take a few minutes to finish calculating.

If you don't know the path, just:

1) Open Terminal

2) Type in du -h -d1 [don't hit return yet]

3) Click on the parent folder in Finder and drag your cursor into Terminal, right after "-d1", on the same line. The path will be inserted there.

4) Hit return.

 

[macduke]

How have I been a Mac user for 17 years and not know about the inspector functionality?? Definitely using this tomorrow.

 

[pavinder]

25 years using Macs and never knew about the Show Inspector option - thanks!

I wonder, is there any way to set it as the default (so that CMD-I opens the Inspector), rather than having to hold the option key?

 

[svish]

Very useful article. Never knew that such options existed. Will try out 'Show Inspector' but I think I will turn on 'Calculate all sizes'

 

[jimmysalg]

Thanks for the show hidden files, great one too