Find the largest files in a directory
Read-only
What do risk levels mean?
- Read-only
- Inspects state without changing anything.
- Low risk
- Reversible with a routine follow-up command.
- Medium risk
- Changes state; undo path documented.
- Destructive
- Deletes or overwrites; confirmation required.
Locates the files consuming the most disk space under a directory, so you can decide what to archive or delete when space runs low.
filesdisksizecleanup
Parameters
Directory to search under.
How many of the largest files to show.
Commands
List the largest files with human-readable sizes, biggest first
find "." -type f -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh | head -n 20Verification
du -h "." | tail -n 1The directory total is consistent with the large files listed.
Undo
Not undoable
This recipe only reads file sizes and changes nothing.
Pitfalls
- Files you cannot read are skipped silently; run with elevated privileges to include them.
- du reports disk usage (block-aligned), which can differ slightly from logical file size.