Remove large files from your computer

21 Jan, 2024 • 164 words • 1 min • updated 05 Sep, 2025

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Whenever disk space gets almost full, I like to use the following software to clean up (unnecessary) big files from my computers:

Windows #

WinDirStat:

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for various versions of Microsoft Windows.

It’s user-friendly and open source.

Linux / macOS #

ncdu:

Ncdu is a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. It is designed to find space hogs on a remote server where you don’t have an entire graphical setup available, but it is a useful tool even on regular desktop systems. Ncdu aims to be fast, simple and easy to use, and should be able to run in any minimal POSIX-like environment with ncurses installed.

Naturally, the command line way™ prevails on Unix systems. It’s one installation command away from your favorite package manager. Usage:

shell

% ncdu /

Update(2025-09-02): diskonaut:

Terminal disk space navigator 🔭

% diskonaut /

Wherein ncdu uses a tree, ranger-style representation and diskonaut uses a visual block representation.