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How do I find out how much disk space a program such as Skype occupies?

My SSD is getting full, and I want to see what can be deleted.

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possible duplicate of How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space? – Mark Feb 21 at 10:14

8 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

If you want to find out how much space an Application and it's associated files are taking up (not just the .app bundle), AppCleaner works great for that. As you can see in this screenshot for Chrome, it shows the application itself, as well as preferences, caches, etc. all nicely totaled up.

enter image description here

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3  
Excellent answer, I love DaisyDisk and have used the others but they only visualise usage by folder. – Adam Eberbach Mar 30 '12 at 3:07
up vote 6 down vote

Daisy Disk

It's a killer app for analyzing disk use on a Mac. It'll scan all your drives and shows you disk use broken down by customizable buckets: file types, programs, tags, etc. It can show you all the disk space used by a program like Skype if you like and more.

Showing Skype Use on my Machine

Edit: it's also on sale right now for $10.

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It seems to be perpetually "on sale". I bought it 6 months ago when it was "on sale" for $10. – Kyle Cronin♦ Mar 30 '12 at 2:56
I have never understood why anyone buys this, when there are utilities like Grand Perspective and Disk Inventory X that are easily as good or better, and free! – Fake Name Mar 30 '12 at 6:37
@FakeName aesthetics matter. – Ian C.♦ Mar 30 '12 at 10:31
up vote 4 down vote

Disk Inventory maps out your disk usage graphically. Easiest way.

enter image description here

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up vote 2 down vote

Grand Perspective is an open-source application that is free. Similarly to Disk Inventory, it uses a tree map for visualization of the file system. The bigger a block, the bigger the file.

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up vote 1 down vote

Alternatively, if you want to use the command line and (looking at the 2nd part of your question) you're just interested in which files are taking up the most space, I often use the find command.

find ~ -size +50M

will find all files within your home directory (~) greater than 50MB.

You can modify the size descriptor after the number like so (see man find)

k       kilobytes (1024 bytes)
M       megabytes (1024 kilobytes)
G       gigabytes (1024 megabytes)
T       terabytes (1024 gigabytes)
P       petabytes (1024 terabytes)
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"Applications" are just folders full of files, so the find command will recurse into them, and unless they have resources individually larger then 50M, this will not show them. – Fake Name Mar 30 '12 at 6:38
du -h --max-depth=1 is much more useful. It prints the size of every item in the current directory, including the total size of every folder. – Fake Name Mar 30 '12 at 6:41
@FakeName I guess I was focussing more on ordinary files that are taking up space as opposed to applications - that might also be useful to the OP if he's trying to free up space. Also, your du command line just gives me du: illegal option -- - – binarybob Mar 30 '12 at 7:04
hmmm. I tried it on linux, assuming they hadn't messed with it too much. I know there is a way to do it on a mac (because I've used it on a mac). Hold on. – Fake Name Mar 30 '12 at 7:16
1  
Ah, it's: du -h -d 1 on mac. Freaking Cent-OS. I guess that's what I get for assuming there is some consistency in the GNU coreutils. – Fake Name Mar 30 '12 at 7:16
up vote 1 down vote

I am using OmniDiskSweeper. It shows you a nice overview of your used diskspaced and which directory is taking how much space.
It can also erases the data.

enter image description here

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up vote 0 down vote

I hate to spoil the party, but I understand the idea is that the disk is getting too full? so why installing an extra application when a simple 'get info' would do the trick?

For Skype:

Showing how to Get info for an App

followed by:

Skype App size

will tell you how big an App is without need for extra space taking software.

In addition, a second alternative is to use the Terminal typing:

du -sh /Applications/Skype.app/
  53M   /Applications/Skype.app/

The differences in size between what the Finder gives and what du gives are due to the fact they calculate size in base 10 (the Finder) and in base 2 (du). See also this link on the matter:

du -sh vs Finder file size

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up vote 0 down vote

Exact application's size consist of its installation file in "Applications" folder and files associated with it (Cashes). Here is an example screenshot about Firefox from 2 Nektony products: ClearDisk and Disk Expert.

So DE found 96.5 Mb, CD - 25.65. So total space equals to 96.5 + 25.65 = 122.15 Mbtotal-program-space

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