List the current folder folder's sizes with the terminal?

Question

I want a list of the folders from the current directory or one that I specify with their size.

I have tried with du but I only get the size of the directories I specify (du . ./f1), and ls doesn't show the size of the folders.

How do I do this without any scripting ?

Thanks ;-) but I've already tried and couldn't find anything. And try Googling du! — kevin, Aug 05 '10 at 06:39
Time changes everything I guess. Now googling `du` gives stackoverflow answers :D — Sreeraj Chundayil, Jul 27 '21 at 06:33

Dennis Williamson · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-04T15:26:39.317

291

If you want to show all the directories in the current directory:

$ du -sh */
788K    foo/
500K    bar/
931K    baz/

To show them starting from another directory:

$ du -sh /path/to/dir/*/
48K     /path/to/dir/dir1/
4.0K    /path/to/dir/dir2/
6.7M    /path/to/dir/dir3/
20K     /path/to/dir/dir4/
8.0K    /path/to/dir/dir5/
44K     /path/to/dir/dir6/

If you want to make sure directories with names starting with a dot are included do shopt -s dotglob first.

edited Nov 04 '18 at 15:26

answered Aug 03 '10 at 18:29

Dennis Williamson

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Thanks all great answers but this one is the simplest one. I forgot the ending / in my tests. – kevin Aug 05 '10 at 06:43
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Where -s means summarise, display the total and -h means human readable – wranvaud Oct 30 '17 at 12:53
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Sort folders by size: `du -s */ | sort -n`. – Anton Tarasenko Nov 01 '18 at 16:28
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@AntonTarasenko: [Sort human readable sizes](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5213288/human-readable-recursive-sorted-list-of-largest-files/5213618#5213618) – Dennis Williamson Nov 01 '18 at 20:58
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Including hidden (dot) directories: https://askubuntu.com/a/356915/176799 – Anton Tarasenko Nov 04 '18 at 10:52
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@AntonTarasenko: `shopt -s dotglob` [doc](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Shopt-Builtin.html) – Dennis Williamson Nov 04 '18 at 15:25
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`-n` does not sorts properly use `du -sh */ | sort -hr` instead – Deepak Mahakale Feb 14 '20 at 14:19

score 24 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 02 '13 at 05:23

On a Mac, the --max-depth option is supplanted by -d [depth]. So, to see a human readable listing of your root drive plus 2 levels deep use the following:

du -hd 2 /*

Note: this command will expose the top two directory levels off your root. This includes traversing one level into your Volumes, and will list the summary sizes of each top-level directory in each of your attached volumes. Depending on what you have attached, this command could take some time to complete.

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 03 '10 at 19:32

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Another aproach is the --max-depth option.

du -h --max-depth=1 .

Will list all directories and files under the current folder with size.

Depth 2 would list one more level of folders.

answered Aug 03 '10 at 19:32

matthias krull

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On Mac, it's `du -hd 2 .` for 2 levels of depth. – Ryan Aug 02 '14 at 02:12
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Ah yes. And probably on FreeBSD as well. Thanks for the info. – matthias krull Aug 07 '14 at 11:25

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 02 '18 at 22:17

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Building on the accepted answer, this command will show you the sizes of the folders in the directory, and will also list them by size for you to interpret easier:

$ du -sh */ | sort -rn

answered Mar 02 '18 at 22:17

Ethan

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score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 03 '10 at 18:09

6

Try:

$ du -s ./f1

or

$ du -sh ./f1

for more friendly readable sizes.

answered Aug 03 '10 at 18:09

Doug Harris

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score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 28 '17 at 15:32

On Mac, you can install the GNU (Linux) implementation of du with Homebrew (brew install coreutils). Then for example:

gdu folder -shL --exclude=.git

where

gdu is the name given to the GNU implementation of du (by default Homebrew does not hide /usr/bin/du);
s produces a grand total for the folder specified (omit if you want to see the breakdown);
h outputs human-readable sizes;
L follows symlinks;
--exclude=.git excludes the git directory within the specified folder (this is just an example).

You can ignore more folders by adding --exclude=blah. You can also specify several folders at once (ie gdu folder1 folder2 ...), and in that case, you can combine all the subtotals into a single size using option c.

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 31 '20 at 00:01

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I like the following approach:

du -schx .[!.]* * | sort -h

where:

s: display only a total for each argument
c: produce a grand total
h: print sizes in a human-readable format
x: skip directories on different file systems
.[!.]* *: Summarize disk usage of each file, recursively for directories (including "hidden" ones)
| sort -h: Sort based on human-readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G)

answered Jul 31 '20 at 00:01

Eduardo Baitello

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I just needed to add the `-r` to the sort to have it give me it in descending order. – ScottS Jul 17 '23 at 20:34
this is the best answer as it takes into account also files in the current folder and not only subfolders. – Sysanin Jul 21 '23 at 08:39

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 12 '16 at 12:26

Worth to mention the NCurses Disk Usage shell command.

Ncdu is a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. It is designed to find space hogs on a remote server where you don't have an entire graphical setup available, but it is a useful tool even on regular desktop systems. Ncdu aims to be fast, simple and easy to use, and should be able to run in any minimal POSIX-like environment with ncurses installed.

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 30 '15 at 15:39

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$ du --max-depth=1 /var/www/ | sort -n -r

answered Jun 30 '15 at 15:39

Andre Mesquita

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When adding an answer to an older question with existing answers it is good practice to explain how your answer is different and include some explanation so that it isn't a command only answer. – Jason Aller Jun 30 '15 at 16:41
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Can you expand yourt answer to explain what the parameters do? – fixer1234 Jun 30 '15 at 18:59

Zombo · Answer 10 · 2018-02-09T01:49:11.607

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Here is a POSIX script that will work with:

A file
Files
A directory
Directories

#!/bin/sh
ls -ARgo "$@" | awk '{q += $3} END {print q}'

Source

edited Feb 09 '18 at 01:49

answered Mar 27 '17 at 23:47

Zombo

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List the current folder folder's sizes with the terminal?

10 Answers10