DaisyDisk is a paid

disk space analyzer A disk utility is a utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters and other mount poi ...

for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. It displays a sunburst diagram of files on a

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

to help with the location or deletion of large files. It can display previews of files using

Quick Look Quick Look is a quick preview feature developed by Apple Inc. which was introduced in its operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The feature was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Jun. 11, 2007. While macOS's Finder has alway ...

. It also allows the user to look at the file directly in Finder, in order to delete it or move it elsewhere.

History

DaisyDisk was started in late 2008 by interaction designer Taras Brizitsky and programmer Oleg Krupnov. They built the codebase from scratch to try to achieve higher speeds than similar programs. They decided to use a sunburst diagram as it is perceived better than other ways of visualizing data (such as

treemap In information visualization and computing, treemapping is a method for displaying hierarchical data using nested figures, usually rectangles. Treemaps display hierarchical ( tree-structured) data as a set of nested rectangles. Each branch of t ...

s).

Features

DaisyDisk needs to scan the disk to create a map of its files and folders. Once the initial scan is completed, DaisyDisk doesn't keep displayed information up to date and reflects only changes to disk made through interaction with DaisyDisk. DaisyDisk can scan multiple disks in parallel. With v4.5 of DaisyDisk, support for

APFS Apple File System (APFS) is a proprietary file system developed and deployed by Apple Inc. for macOS Sierra (10.12.4) and later, iOS 10.3 and later, tvOS 10.2 and later, watchOS 3.2 and later, and all versions of iPadOS. It aims to fix c ...

was added.

Interface

DaisyDisk displays the contents as a

color-coded A color code is a system for displaying information by using different colors. The earliest examples of color codes in use are for long-distance communication by use of flags, as in semaphore communication. The United Kingdom adopted a color ...

sunburst diagram, resembling the petals of a daisy. The interface places the root of the hard drive at the center of this daisy, and displays a hierarchical structure of that hard drive's file system that radiates from that center. This daisy is color-coded to differentiate between folders, while files themselves are always displayed as gray. In the right sidebar of the interface, DaisyDisk also provides a legend for these color codes. When hovering over a file or folder, the right sidebar of the interface updates with contextual information such as the file or folder name and their absolute path. When clicking on a folder on the daisy, a new daisy is displayed with the chosen folder as its root. The interface shows a "breadcrumb trail" of the current folder right above the sunburst diagram. DaisyDisk provides a

Trash Trash may refer to: Garbage * Garbage, unwanted or undesired waste material ** Litter, material discarded in inappropriate places ** Municipal solid waste, unwanted or undesired waste material generated in a municipal environment Arts, enter ...

-like collector icon in the lower left of its interface where files and folders can be dragged and dropped for deletion. As of DaisyDisk v3, a specialized version of the app exists for Mac users with Retina Displays.

Integration

One of the ways DaisyDisk integrates with the Mac features is through its support of the

function, which is included in Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" and later. Hovering over any file or folder in DaisyDisk's interface and pressing

space bar The space bar is on the bottom center of the keyboard The space bar, spacebar, blank, or space key is a key on a typewriter or alphanumeric keyboard in the form of a horizontal bar in the lowermost row, significantly wider than all other keys. ...

utilizes Quick Look and displays additional information about that file or folder in regards to its location and contents.

References

Disk usage analysis software {{Mac-software-stub