Disk Usage Terminal Tools

Disk usage tools answer where the space went. The traditional answers are du and df, which print per directory and per filesystem totals as plain text.

 

Newer versions scan directories in parallel, sort the largest entries first, and draw the result as a tree or a treemap that can be walked with the arrow keys and pruned along the way. Sysadmins and developers open them when a build server fills up, a container image comes out larger than expected, or a laptop reports no free space. Once the culprit is found, the disk cleanup tools take it from there.

 

Below is a list of terminal tools that measure and explore disk usage.