Find Large Files in Mac OS X with Search
Whether you’re feeling the pinch as hard drive space runs low or you’re just wondering where all your disk space went, it’s easy to find large files in Mac OS X by using the built-in search tools. Here’s what to do:
- From the Mac OS X Desktop, open any new Finder window
- Hit Command+F to bring up Search
- Click on “Kind” filter and select “Other”, then select “File Size” from the attribute list
- Click on the second filter and choose “is greater than”
- In the third space, enter the size to search for anything greater than (ex: 100) and choose either MB or GB as the final filter
The file and app list below will automatically update as anything larger than the specified file size is found on the hard drive. Be sure that “This Mac” is selected if you’re getting limited results, though you can also use the search limiters to find large files contained within single folders or user directories.
Click on the “Save” button in the upper right corner and you’ll turn the File Size search into a Smart Folder that can be easily accessed from the sidebar for easy future retrieval, that folder will constantly be updated with large files only.
A common pit of enormous files is the user Downloads folder, when using the file size search don’t be surprised if you run into a fair amount of .dmg and .zip files sitting idly in there that have long been forgotten.
Great tip, but it’s made much more useful if you use Size as a sort item too so you can find the biggest items on top of the list.
Keep em comin!
On Lion you can add columns on finder. Add Size column before or after the search and tap/click on the column name to order by the column.
Good trick…and you know what…i have Google Chrome that is almost 1.5GB…how can be possible??
Thaks for the tip.
Anybody knows how to filter files by kind, to show ony mpgs or xmls like in Win7?
@alex
you search by file type ie; .mpg or .jpg to search for all jpeg images you would just type this in the search box: .jpg
Nice sharing, I am going to throw my mac away, waiting for WIN8, amzing sys
James, how do you use size as a sort item, w/o Lion? Thanks, J
Best part about this search function is that it doesn’t actually search all of the files on your computer. Strong logic. (No offense to the editor)