Overview
dfdu is a disk usage browser for the terminal. Browse, sort and delete while the scan is still running, see what your space is made of (caches, build output, emulators, containers), and get a list of what is safe to remove. It is written in Rust and runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.
Features
Section titled “Features”- Browse while it scans. The list fills in and re-sorts as the scan runs. Nothing to wait for.
- Fast. Parallel scanning tuned to the storage device. As fast as or faster than gdu and dua in our benchmarks.
- Cleanup view. Recognises caches, build folders, SDKs and old installers, says how safe each is to delete and how much it frees. Rules are extendable.
- Treemap, tree mode, duplicates and largest files, one key away from the list.
- Opens last time’s scan at once. A repeat
dfdu PATHshows the cached scan and refreshes only what changed. - History. Every scan is recorded, so you can ask what grew since last week.
- Remote. Browse and delete on another machine over ssh.
- Scriptable. JSON and NDJSON output, a CI mode that fails above a size limit, and ncdu export import.
- Safe by default. Deletes go to the Trash; permanent deletes ask you to type
delete.--read-onlyremoves the delete keys.
Compared to other tools
Section titled “Compared to other tools”| dfdu | ncdu | gdu | dua | Dust | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interactive browser | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Parallel scan | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Treemap | ✓ | ||||
| Cleanup recommendations | ✓ | ||||
| Duplicate files | ✓ | ||||
| Scan history and diffs | ✓ | ||||
| Reads ncdu exports | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Keeping the whole tree in memory costs dfdu about 85 bytes per entry (850 MiB for 10 million files). If you only want a total, dua aggregate or du -s use a few megabytes. The benchmarks have the full numbers.