To do so, 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. So while omitting this information can get annoying, it does ensure file browsing in Finder stays snappy.īut 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? It might not be obvious, but thankfully it is possible to make Finder calculate folder size when navigating items as a list.

Ideally, simple UI behaviour would handle many usage styles: small or maximized Explorer windows, single or multiple monitors, etc.When you use Finder's List view to work with files on your Mac, a glance at the Size column tells you the size of each file, but when it comes to folders in the list, Finder just shows a couple of dashes instead.įinder skips showing folder sizes because calculating them takes time – if several folders contained thousands of files, working out the total size would likely slow down your Mac. The popups auto-size and position, but it's tricky. Popup windows frequently cover up Explorer's Close button.Background scanning is not optimized: Windows Vista/7/8 support I/O priorities, which should be used to keep scanning fast while keeping the system responsive.This would work better with multiple accounts in Windows XP too. The service already does this internally. The system-permissions service should really be abandoned in favour of user-level caches. The background service is difficult to manage with Windows's UAC model.I've started this, but it's not working yet. This has the effect of making the Windows directory appear larger than it really is! I think the best solution is to split Size into two concepts: Logical Size and Physical size. Sizes are difficult to interpret correctly! Since Windows Vista, the system makes use of hard links, where the same physical file can appear in multiple directory entries.

Folder size application