Each operating system has a built-in storage view that shows which categories use the most space: Settings > System > Storage on Windows 11 and System Settings > General > Storage on macOS. For a list of the actual biggest files, run Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File | Sort-Object Length -Descending in PowerShell, or du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -h and find / -type f -size +1G on Linux.
The commands below search a folder you choose. Start with your home folder: that is where downloads, videos and old backups usually pile up, and it avoids permission errors from system folders.
How to see what uses space on Windows (Settings)
On Windows 11, open Start > Settings > System > Storage. Windows shows how much of the drive each category uses (apps, temporary files, documents and so on). Under Cleanup recommendations, Microsoft lists four groups: temporary files, large or unused files, files synced to the cloud, and unused apps. The Large or unused files group is the quickest built-in way to spot big files you have forgotten about.
On Windows 10, Microsoft points to the older Disk Cleanup tool instead (type disk cleanup in the taskbar search box), which removes temporary and system files but does not list individual large files. Use File Explorer or PowerShell below for that.
How to find large files in File Explorer
Open the folder (or This PC to search every drive) and type a size filter into the search box at the top right:
size:>1GBWhen the results appear, switch to the Details view and click the Size column header to sort them. Microsoft's own instructions describe the same sort for any folder: View > Details, then right-click empty space and choose Sort by > Size.
File Explorer also accepts named sizes. We translated them with the Windows Search query helper on Windows 11 (build 22631) to see the exact byte ranges they stand for:
| Search term | Matches files of |
|---|---|
size:large | more than 128 MiB, up to 1 GiB |
size:huge | more than 1 GiB, up to 4 GiB |
size:gigantic | more than 4 GiB |
size:>1GB | more than 1,073,741,824 bytes (1 GiB) |
So size:gigantic skips a 3 GB video. An explicit value such as size:>500MB is easier to reason about. File Explorer search relies on the Windows Search index, so folders that are not indexed are searched slowly and results keep arriving for a while.
How to list the biggest files with PowerShell
PowerShell gives a complete, sorted list without depending on the search index. This lists the 20 largest files under your user folder, with sizes in megabytes:
Get-ChildItem -Path $HOME -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Sort-Object Length -Descending |
Select-Object -First 20 FullName, @{Name='SizeMB';Expression={[math]::Round($_.Length / 1MB, 1)}}What each part does:
-Recursewalks every subfolder;-Fileleaves folders out of the list.-ErrorAction SilentlyContinuehides "access denied" messages for folders your account cannot read, so they don't bury the results.Sort-Object Length -Descendingputs the biggest first.Lengthis the file size in bytes.- The
@{Name=...;Expression=...}part adds a calculated column that converts bytes to MB.
Example output from a test folder (on a PC with a comma as the decimal separator, the numbers show as 2048,0 and so on):
FullName SizeMB
-------- ------
C:\Users\alex\Videos\holiday.mp4 2048.0
C:\Users\alex\Downloads\setup.exe 500.0
C:\Users\alex\Videos\clip.mov 150.0By default Get-ChildItem skips hidden files. Add -Force to include them, and run PowerShell as administrator if you want to scan a whole drive such as C:\. To list only files over 1 GB, filter before sorting:
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ -Recurse -File -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Where-Object Length -gt 1GB |
Sort-Object Length -Descending |
Select-Object FullName, LengthHow to see what uses space on a Mac
On macOS Ventura 13 and later, choose Apple menu > System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then Storage. On earlier versions, choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then Storage. Click the info button next to a category to see its files and options; Apple notes this is particularly useful for categories such as Documents, Applications and Messages, where large files usually hide.
How to find large files on a Mac in Terminal
The find and du on macOS are BSD versions, so a few options differ from the Linux (GNU) ones. To list every file over 1 GB in your home folder:
find ~ -type f -size +1G 2>/dev/null-type f limits the search to regular files, -size +1G means larger than 1 GiB, and 2>/dev/null discards "Permission denied" messages. To see which folders in your home directory are largest, with sizes in KiB sorted smallest to largest:
du -k -d 1 ~ | sort -n-d 1 reports one level of subfolders, and -k prints sizes as plain numbers of 1,024-byte blocks so sort -n can order them correctly. Run the same command on the biggest folder to drill down.
How to find large files on Linux
Start with folder totals, then drill into the biggest one:
du -h --max-depth=1 ~ | sort -hExample output from a test folder (GNU coreutils 8.32):
500M ./installers
2.2G ./videos
2.7G .-h prints human-readable sizes such as 500M and 2.2G, --max-depth=1 (short form -d 1) stops at one level below the starting folder, and sort -h understands those suffixes, so the biggest folder ends up on the last line. The last line is the total for the folder you started in.
To list individual files over a threshold across the whole system:
sudo find / -xdev -type f -size +1G -exec ls -lh {} + 2>/dev/null-xdev stops find from descending into other mounted file systems (other disks, network shares, and virtual file systems such as /proc). -exec ls -lh {} + prints each match with its size. One detail from the man page: find rounds sizes up to the unit you give, so -size +1G matches files larger than 1 GiB, and -size -1G matches only empty files. Use -size +1000M or a byte count (-size +1073741824c) when you need precision.
The same du and find commands work in Git Bash and WSL on Windows.
Interactive option on Linux: ncdu
ncdu is an interactive version of du: it scans once, then lets you browse folders sorted by size with the arrow keys. It is not installed by default on most distributions; install it from your package manager (for example sudo apt install ncdu on Debian and Ubuntu, sudo dnf install ncdu on Fedora), then run:
ncdu -x /-x keeps the scan on one file system. Inside ncdu, d deletes the selected file or folder (after a confirmation) and q quits.
What usually turns out to be large
- Downloads. Installers, disk images (
.iso,.dmg) and archives you already extracted. - Video and phone backups. Screen recordings, exported videos, and old iPhone or Android backups.
- Virtual machines and containers. VM disk files and Docker data can reach tens of gigabytes. Delete them through the tool that created them (for example
docker system prune), not by removing files by hand. See Docker vs virtual machines for why both take so much space. - Developer caches.
node_modulesfolders, package-manager caches and build output.
If you plan to move a big file to an external drive before deleting the original, compare checksums of both copies first; the larely checksum tool computes SHA-256 in the browser without uploading the file.
If the numbers still don't add up
If Storage settings report far more used space than your searches find, the space is in places a normal search skips. On Windows, run PowerShell as administrator with -Force to include hidden and system files; the page file (pagefile.sys) and hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) in C:\ are common surprises. On macOS and Linux, run the commands with sudo. Deleted files also keep using space until you empty the Recycle Bin or Trash.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my disk look full when the large files add up to much less?
- Hidden and system files are left out of most listings by default. On Windows that includes pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys in the root of C:, which are hidden system files; on macOS and Linux, files in other users' folders and system directories need sudo to be counted. Run the searches with hidden files included (Get-ChildItem -Force, or sudo on macOS and Linux), and check the system categories in Storage settings, which count space that a user-level file search cannot see.
- Is it safe to delete the biggest files I find?
- Only if you know what they are. Videos, disk images, old installers and archives in your own folders are usually safe to remove. Files under C:\Windows, /System, /usr or /var belong to the operating system or installed software, and deleting them by hand can break things. Use the app's own uninstaller or the system's cleanup tools for those.
- What is the difference between du and find for this?
- du adds up sizes per folder, so it answers 'which folder is big'. find with -size lists individual files over a threshold, so it answers 'which file is big'. A folder full of thousands of small files shows up in du but never in find -size +1G.
- How do I see which folders are biggest in PowerShell?
- Windows has no built-in du command, but PowerShell can add up each subfolder: Get-ChildItem -Directory | ForEach-Object { [pscustomobject]@{ Folder = $_.Name; SizeMB = [math]::Round((Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse -File -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum / 1MB, 1) } } | Sort-Object SizeMB -Descending. Run it inside the folder you want to inspect, then repeat inside the largest result.