Whether you’re trying to manage the space on your hard drive or figure out how to transfer some files to a friend, knowing how to find the size of files and folders can often be an essential task. It’s easy to do and something you need to know when managing space on your Mac.
You can use at least two different methods with Finder to check file and folder sizes on your Mac. And if you want, you can even use Mac Terminal too.
My name is Eric, and I have been working with computer file systems since the early 1980s. Finding the size of a file or folder is important for many reasons. It’s a basic computer skill anyone can learn, and I will be glad to teach you.
If you would like to see a few different ways to find file and folder sizes on a Mac, stick around, and we will go through them below.
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3 Ways to Check File or Folder Size on Mac
There are many ways you can find the size of files and folders on your Mac. Below are three common methods of doing this. Let’s take a look at them.
Method 1: Finder
There are a couple of different ways to find the size using the Finder application, and if you configure Finder’s settings to show the sizes, all you have to do is navigate to the file or folder that you would like to do this with. Just follow the steps below.
Step 1: Open Finder.
Step 2: Click on View from the menu at the top of the screen.
Step 3: If it does not already have a check by it, click on the selection that reads “as List” to ensure it has a checkmark beside it.
Step 4: On the same menu, click on the selection that says Show View Options.
Step 5: Make sure the Size and Calculate all Sizes options are checked.
You may now close the options window, and you should see the sizes of all files and folders. It may take a few seconds to calculate the folder sizes in the window. Now you can just navigate to where your file or folder is located, and you will see the size.
Method 2: Get Info
If you don’t want to change the settings in Finder, there is a simple way to check the size of a particular file or folder.
Step 1: Use Finder to navigate to the location of the file or folder.
Step 2: Right-click on the file or folder in question to bring up the context menu.
Step 3: Select Get Info from the menu.
This will bring up the info window, which will show the size. When the file is selected, you can use the shortcut keys Command+I instead of the context menu if you like. There is also a Get Info selection on the main File menu if you would rather use that.
Method 3: Mac Terminal
If you’re a user of Mac’s Terminal application and you find yourself frequently working in the command line environment, you may want to view a file or folder size there. You can do that using the du command as shown below.
Step 1: Navigate to the location of the file or folder you are looking for.
Step 2: Use the du command with the -h parameter as shown below.
du -h <File or Folder Name>
For our example, we are looking for the size of a file called test.txt, but you can substitute the name of any file or folder you wish to find the size of.
Conclusion
For most, using Finder will be the first choice for finding the size of a file or folder. You can configure Finder to show the sizes by default, as shown above, or you can simply use the Get Info command.
If you like to use Mac’s Terminal application, the du -h command is another method you can use to find the size of any file or folder on your system.
Which method do you prefer? I would love to hear your opinion. As always, let me know if you have any questions or comments.