Map: see every folder at its real size

Scan anything, then look around

The Map shows the latest scan. From the toolbar you can scan your Home Folder, the Whole Mac, another disk, or Choose Folder…, and you can drag any folder onto the window or the Dock icon. Scanning only reads. It uses worker threads that read each directory with getattrlistbulk, which returns a whole batch of names, sizes and dates in one system call, so you can look around as soon as it's done. Other disks inside the scanned folder and folders you exclude in Settings are skipped.

This is the core of any disk space analyzer for Mac: every folder measured at once and drawn to scale. The guide to what's taking up space on a Mac shows how to get the same answer from System Settings and Finder first.

Reading the chart

The chart fills the left of the window and a list of the current folder's contents sits beside it, biggest first, with the smallest grouped together. In the screenshot, the home folder holds 82 items using 376 GB, and the treemap shows Library at 142 GB and Code at 124 GB.

Hover over a segment for its size, its share of the folder, and a line from the field guide. Click to zoom in. Esc or ⌘↑ zooms out, and the breadcrumb at the top jumps back to any level. Segments have VoiceOver labels, and the zoom animation follows Reduce Motion.

Reclaimable items are colored by category, the same colors as the Overview ring. Items already in the Cleanup tray have a tray icon in the list.

The inspector

Select anything to see its details on the right: size on disk, file and folder counts, kind, when it was modified and last opened. For a folder, notes explain the measuring. In the screenshot:

• 376 GB on disk for 461 GB of files, stored in less space
• APFS compression saves 56.3 GB across 75,687 files
• 897,143 cloned files may share space with their originals
• 10,252 hard links counted once
• 560 folders couldn't be read
• 1 other disk inside wasn't counted

Folders that couldn't be read usually need Full Disk Access. MacClearings reports them rather than guessing. When the selection is something Suggestions found, the inspector also shows that rule's explanation.

Every folder explained

The About this card comes from the field guide: what a folder is, which app made it, whether it comes back after you move it, and what happens without it. The field guide card on this page is one entry, exactly as the app shows it. When a folder has no entry of its own, the lookup walks up to the nearest folder that does.

This matters most in ~/Library, where names like Group Containers or Application Support say little. The guide to Library caches goes through the folders people ask about most.

From the Map to the Trash

Right-click any segment or row for Reveal in Finder, Quick Look, Copy Path and Add to Cleanup. Folders also have Zoom In, and anything already staged has Remove from Cleanup.

Adding something stages it in the Cleanup tray as one of "Your picks". Nothing moves yet. Review & Clean Up… lists every staged item with its size, and only Move to Trash in that list moves anything. Right before each item moves, MacClearings checks it again and skips it if it changed, is open in an app, or is now protected.

Some folders can't be staged at all. Your home folder, its standard folders and the top of the disk are protected; their contents are judged item by item. The inspector says so, as in the screenshot: "A top-level folder macOS and you rely on." The safety page lists everything the denylist covers.

Items you pick yourself are limited only by that denylist, so read the review list before you confirm. Undo is in History for as long as the items stay in the Trash, and the space comes back when you empty the Trash yourself.