bfiles

bfiles (big files) is a fast directory size analyzer written in Rust. Point it at a folder and it shows you which folders use the most disk space.

Installation

macOS and Linux (including Raspberry Pi)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnkesko/bfiles/master/install.sh | sh

Windows

Run in PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnkesko/bfiles/master/install.ps1 | iex

Manual download

Prebuilt binaries are available for:

• Linux x86_64
• Linux aarch64 (Raspberry Pi 3/4/5 and other ARM64 boards, static binary)
• macOS arm64
• macOS x86_64
• Windows x86_64

To update later, run bfiles upgrade — it replaces the binary in place with the latest release.

Usage

bfiles -p <PATH> [OPTIONS]
bfiles upgrade

By default you get a compact table of the largest folders and a total. Add -d to also see what is inside each of them.

bfiles -p . -t 3

Traversed 2063 items in 15.33ms

Folder        Size
target   228.05 MB
src       21.86 KB
.git      13.69 KB
Total    228.09 MB

bfiles -p . -t 3 -d

Traversed 2063 items in 15.33ms

Folder        Size
target   228.05 MB
src       21.86 KB
.git      13.69 KB
Total    228.09 MB

Details

target                     228.05 MB
- target/debug             125.29 MB
- target/release           102.69 MB
- target/release/deps       90.07 MB
- target/debug/deps         77.79 MB
- target/debug/incremental  33.44 MB

src                         21.86 KB
- src/traverse               6.17 KB

.git                        13.69 KB
- .git/objects              10.54 KB
- .git/objects/16            2.95 KB
- .git/objects/29            1.33 KB
- .git/objects/70            1.20 KB
- .git/logs                 990.00 B

The table has one row per folder directly under the scanned path. Files that sit directly in the scanned path are grouped under (files). In the details view, each folder lists up to 5 of its largest subfolders.

Options

• -p, --path <PATH> — Path to scan; user@host:/path scans a remote machine over ssh
• -d, --details — Also show what is inside each folder
• -t, --top <N> — How many folders to show (default: 10)
• -m, --max_depth <N> — How deep to scan (default: no limit)
• -e, --engine <ENGINE> — rayon or crossbeam (default: crossbeam)
• --exclude <PATHS> — Skip folders; separate several with |, or repeat the flag
• --include-cloud — Also scan cloud-synced folders (skipped by default, see below)
• -h, --help — Show help
• -V, --version — Show version

More examples:

bfiles -p ~ --exclude "~/Library|~/.cache"
bfiles -p . -e rayon -t 20
bfiles -p 'pi@pi01:/srv/storage' -t 10

A leading ~ in paths works even inside quotes — bfiles expands it itself.

Remote scanning

Give -p an address in the same form scp uses, and the scan runs on that machine over ssh:

bfiles -p 'user@host:/srv/storage' -t 10

The remote machine scans its own disks at local speed and sends back only the final summary — a few kilobytes. This is much faster than scanning a network mount of the same data, where every folder listing is a network round-trip.

Requirements: bfiles v0.4 or newer must be installed on the remote machine, and ssh user@host must work (keys, agents, and password prompts behave exactly as with plain ssh). The scan flags -t, -m, -e, --exclude, and --include-cloud apply on the remote side; -d changes how the result is shown locally.

How sizes are measured

• Sizes are logical file sizes (what ls -l shows), not disk blocks. Sparse files count at their full size, so numbers match Finder rather than du.
• Hardlinked files count once per location, like Finder. du counts them once in total, so bfiles can report more than du on trees with many hardlinks.
• Symlinks are never followed and count as zero bytes.
• -m, --max_depth limits how deep the scan goes. Anything below the limit is not measured at all, so the sizes shown are partial. Run without it to get true totals.
• Folders that cannot be read (missing permissions) are skipped and reported in a warning; totals are then underestimates.
• Cloud-synced folders (~/Library/CloudStorage and ~/Library/Mobile Documents on macOS) are skipped by default with a notice, because listing them goes through each provider's sync service and can take minutes. Pass --include-cloud to scan them anyway, or point bfiles directly at one of them.

Platform support

bfiles works on macOS, Linux, and Windows. The test suite runs on all three in CI.

• macOS uses decimal size units (KB = 1000)
• Windows and Linux use binary size units (KB = 1024)

Building from source

cargo build --release

The binary is created at target/release/bfiles. You can also install it with Cargo:

cargo install --path . --force

License

MIT