WinDirStat is a program that allows you to find drive space hogs at a glance. It achieves that by displaying a drive, drives or directories in a treemap that assigns bigger areas to bigger files and directories. Making those areas visually separate by coloring and other means allows you to see literally at a glance what the space hogs are and where to dig deeper.

The directory tree is simultaneously shown as a tree list and as a treemap. One can effortlessly gain an impression of the proportions on the drive(s).

Is WinDirStat safe to use?

Yes, it's safe and widely trusted. It doesn't modify files unless you manually delete them.

Can I delete files directly from WinDirStat?

Yes, You can right-click on any file or folder and choose to delete it directly within the interface. However, it's strongly recommended to review what you delete, as WinDirStat doesn't move files to the Recycle Bin - deletions are permanent.

Does WinDirStat support network drives and external disks?

Yes, WinDirStat can analyze local drives, network shares, and external storage devices as long as they're accessible via Windows Explorer. However, scans over a network may take longer due to transfer speed limits.

Why do some file sizes in WinDirStat differ from what Windows Explorer shows?

WinDirStat calculates actual disk usage, not just the logical file size shown in Explorer. It accounts for cluster sizes, NTFS compression, and hard links, which can make sizes appear slightly different from what Windows reports in folder properties.

Does WinDirStat detect duplicate files automatically?

No, WinDirStat identifies which files take up the most space but doesn't compare file contents for duplication. To remove duplicates, users often combine it with tools like dupeGuru, Auslogics Duplicate File Finder, or CCleaner.

Features

  • Three views: Directory Tree, Treemap, and Extension
  • Duplicate file detection
  • Built-in cleanup actions including Open, Delete, Show Properties
  • User-defined cleanup actions (command line based)

What's New

Enhancements

  • Improved NTFS direct volume scanning performance
  • Reduced memory usage in File Watcher
  • Reduced memory allocations during file enumeration and path filtering

Bug Fixes

  • Corrected list column alignment when scrolling horizontally

Previous Changelog

Enhancements

  • Added selection of multiple individual folders (thanks @djdomi)
  • Added scanning support for MTP portable devices
  • Added volume / free space stats for administrative share drive paths
  • Added size proportion tooltips showing percentages of the total scan and parent folder
  • Added configurable font / toolbar scaling with Windows text size support
  • Added support for an arbitrary number of custom cleanups
  • Added greater-than / less-than comparisons for file size and age exclusions
  • Added style presets for treemap visualization
  • Added cancellation support while loading NTFS MFT records
  • Added optional sparse hashing for duplicate detection in files over 64 MiB
  • Added live path filtering with regular expressions in File Watcher
  • Added search filters for size ranges, item type, and owner (thanks @djdomi)
  • Added size totals for search results
  • Added option to display seconds in timestamps
  • Added deleted file recovery for NTFS and exFAT volumes
  • Added free / unknown space labels to sunburst and flame graphs
  • Added option to exclude Dropbox "ignored" files and folders (thanks @djdomi)
  • Added Arabic translation (thanks @Alhlhli, @harryytm)
  • Added Hindi translation for the application and installer
  • Improved hardlink processing performance and memory usage
  • Improved scanning, tree update, and file watcher performance through batched updates
  • Improved duplicate file and largest file tracking performance using incremental updates
  • Improved memory usage and responsiveness in Permissions and Storage Analytics views
  • Reduced memory usage for large scans and tree views
  • Improved visualization backgrounds and placeholders to match light and dark modes
  • Improved Advanced settings page layout (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved legacy Windows OS compatibility when using modern build tools
  • Improved Simplified Chinese translation (thanks @wcxu21)
  • Improved Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong) translation (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved Italian translation (thanks @bovirus)
  • Improved translation grammar and keyboard mnemonics across supported languages
  • Migrated the UI framework from MFC to native Win32/GDI (reduced executable size)

Bug Fixes

  • Corrected hardlink deduplication overwriting files for multiple selected hash groups
  • Corrected hardlink size accounting and references after refreshing or removing files
  • Corrected size proportion sorting with Pacman animation size modes
  • Corrected inflated sizes for WSL pseudo-files accessed through network shares
  • Corrected clipped comparison controls in filtering settings (thanks @harryytm)
  • Corrected progress dialog flickering during text updates
  • Corrected toolbar buttons displaying unrelated tooltip text
  • Corrected a crash when requesting administrator elevation
  • Corrected lost scan settings after administrator restart
  • Corrected crashes on custom cleanup errors
  • Corrected scan completion stalls during memory cleanup
  • Corrected Remove Empty Folders potentially removing reparse point targets
  • Corrected folder counts and zoom state after removing multi-root scan targets
  • Corrected invalid attributes being lost when loading CSV/JSON results
  • Corrected WinGet upgrades for MSI installations using non-English locales
  • Corrected language IDs and text encoding in localized MSI installers
  • Corrected opening properties for "This PC" items (thanks @harryytm)
  • Corrected directory enumeration in recursive user-defined cleanups
  • Corrected directory modification timestamps being overwritten during parallel scans
  • Corrected potential race condition when releasing MFT indexes during scan cancellation
  • Corrected unresponsive drives blocking drive selection and elevated drive mapping
  • Corrected extensions pane remaining collapsed when restored
  • Corrected folder expansion during active scans
  • Corrected indentation for deeply nested directories
  • Corrected Permissions view actions to resolve items in the current scan
  • Corrected pending File Watcher operations being released before cancellation completes
  • Corrected NTFS file references losing their sequence numbers
  • Corrected shadow copy menu when running without administrator privileges
  • Restored support for volume path formats (thanks @harryytm)

Enhancements

  • Added flame graph as an alternative visualization view (thanks @P403n1x87)
  • Added sunburst graph as an alternative visualization view
  • Added Hilbert and Moore treemap visualization layouts
  • Added additional window layouts
  • Added per-user Explorer context menu registration
  • Added configurable process CPU and I/O priority
  • Added absolute/relative percentage display modes
  • Added confirmation prompt for potentially destructive actions
  • Added list-header column choosers
  • Added File Watcher toolbar controls
  • Added cancellable file hashing progress (thanks @harryytm)
  • Added folder frames color customization and draw threshold (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved populating large message box lists (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved File Watcher defaults and autoscroll behavior (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved percentage progress messages
  • Improved message box dialog performance for massive lists (thanks @harryytm)
  • Improved logical/physical size menu item generalization
  • Improved font refresh behavior after settings changes
  • Improved remote volume scanning performance using smaller buffers
  • Modernized locale string retrieval functions (thanks @harryytm)

Bug Fixes

  • Corrected archive compatibility issues
  • Corrected indeterminate progress dialog repainting
  • Corrected layout view type identifiers (thanks @harryytm)
  • Corrected menu mnemonic conflicts across translations
  • Corrected OLE dependency on context menu
  • Corrected optional pane resizing across window layouts
  • Corrected shell context menu clipboard operations
  • Corrected some argument passing issues
  • Corrected time accounting when scan is paused
  • Corrected keyboard focus navigation between data panes
  • Restored the option to hide the visualization pane

WinDirStat 2.7.0

  • Added Storage Analytics and cost optimization view
  • Added permissions scanning and export capabilities
  • Added window layout chooser for the main panes
  • Added tools to remove empty folders and change folder dates to last change
  • Added folder frames option to treemap visualization
  • Added multilingual support for MSI installer
  • Added file deletion warning before profile deletions
  • Added profile deletion progress tracking
  • Added xxHash (XXH3) as a selectable file hashing algorithm
  • Added option to group unregistered file extensions
  • Added shortcut to launch Microsoft Storage Settings
  • Added extension search on double-click in extension list (thanks @harryytm)
  • Added selected items count and statistics to status bar (thanks @harryytm)
  • Added UTF-8 BOM support for CSV/JSON files
  • Improved column width autosizing performance in list and tree views
  • Improved progress control rendering and layout behavior
  • Improved multi-file operations and multi-selection properties dialog
  • Improved CSV/JSON loading performance using buffered reads
  • Improved tab spacing in light mode
  • Improved Italian translation (thanks @bovirus)

Bug Fixes

  • Corrected accelerated scanning on Linux-created NTFS file systems
  • Corrected potential crash when scanning root network shares
  • Corrected potential shutdown hang or delay after a scan completes
  • Corrected potential scan cancellation hang when worker thread is blocked
  • Corrected progress bar behavior dropping from 100% back to 99% at scan completion
  • Corrected layout alignment and spacing in setting dialogs
  • Corrected localization language fallback logic regression (thanks @harryytm)
  • Corrected various other minor issues

Miscellaneous

  • Added MSIX bundle publishing support in WinGet
  • Updated build script to default to the beta configuration after a short delay