DaisyDisk 4+

Recover disk space

Software Ambience Corp.

    • 4.6 • 882 Ratings
    • $9.99

Screenshots

Description

Get a visual breakdown of your disk space in form of an interactive map, reveal the biggest space wasters, and remove them with a simple drag and drop.
Discover what’s hiding inside the “Other” storage category and clear it up.
Recover disk space by finding and removing large useless files.
Supports all kinds of local drives, as well as the most popular cloud disks.

Featured in the “Essentials”, “Best of Mac App Store” in 2015, 2013 and 2011, “Get Productive”, “Get Stuff Done” and “Invaluable Utilities” editorials of the Mac App Store.

Over 620 reviews in the media including major titles like Forbes, TechRadar, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, MacRumors, 9to5mac, Macworld, TUAW, MacStories and many others.

Daring Fireball: “[…] Daisy Disk is my personal favorite for analyzing disk usage on the Mac. It’s a beautiful app. […]”

TechRadar: “[…] we recommend an easy-to-use utility called DaisyDisk. This app helps you easily find and remove unneeded files you may have forgotten about.”

LifeHacker: “DaisyDisk is a beautiful disk space analyzer. It’s the preference of many Mac users. […] DaisyDisk is very fast and very pretty.”

Gizmodo: “Deleting files and sorting out disk-space is one of those tasks most people dread, so I can definitely appreciate that DaisyDisk has tried making it as fun (and beautiful) as possible.”

MacRumors: “The new DaisyDisk 4 has a new, flatter design […], with bright colors, it’s able to scan drives up to 20 times as fast, and it consumes less memory when in use.”

9to5Mac: “DaisyDisk, chosen by Apple as a Mac App Store ‘essential’, provides a cleaner and more interactive circular interface for [visualizing Mac’s hard drive].”

Macworld: “For only ten bucks, DaisyDisk is a simple, convenient utility for every Mac owner, and it gets the job done well for less technically-inclined users.”

TUAW: “Daisy Disk is the perfect example of one of those tools that should be built right into OS X.”

MacStories: “While there are a few similar apps none of them even come close to matching the beautiful DaisyDisk interface.”

Beautiful Pixels: “DaisyDisk is a phenomenally helpful utility app for Mac. […] This is a really fascinating way to take a look at all the files and folders residing on your Mac.”

Notable features:
• Unique interface that makes it easier than ever to find and delete large useless files
• Unmatched speed of scanning – it typically takes only a few seconds to scan your entire startup disk (depends on your disk and CPU models)
• Integrated QuickLook for previewing file content
• Scanning multiple disks in parallel at maximum speed
• Real-time information about mounted disks
• Supports all kinds of built-in and external drives, memory cards and network storage
• Supports cloud storage services: Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box
• In-app file deletion
• Fully supports Retina displays

What’s New

Version 4.30

- Updated the application icon to match the newest design of the operating system.

Ratings and Reviews

4.6 out of 5
882 Ratings

882 Ratings

MWJump ,

Actually Perfect

I've been using DaisyDisk for a pretty long time now (> 3 years) and honestly its the best disk space visualisation tool i've used ever. It scans quickly and the results are clear and very well presented. I can't really think of a way it could be improved.

I usually wouldn't bother to review it but did a scan today to clean some stuff up and noticed a large amount of 'hidden' files. DaisyDisk showed a notice that it couldn't show what the files were, however, because, as an app store app, it couldn't request the appropriate permissions and directed me to download the standalone version. A lot of developers would take the opportunity here and double dip and charge you again but just took a download and it automatically transferred my license for free.. that is just a stand-up way of doing business.

It is a fast beautiful app that I consider to be fairly essential and cant recommend highly enough.

LastSlash ,

DaisyDisk saved me a lot of time

Due to a mis-configured backup I had 3TB of hidden system files on my Mac that were making the computer unusably slow. DaisyDisk let me see the files, and then its free add-on license for the direct download version with Administrator features let me access and delete them. Before DaisyDisk my choices were pretty much format the HDD or buy a new computer as my current Fusion drive is about 5 years old. DaisyDisk's excellent documentaiton showed me how to run diagonistics on my Fusion drive and determine it was operating without errors and no need for new hardware at this point. Great value for money considering the time DaisyDisk saved, and I recommend you try it to get a better understanding prior to spending time or money on other solutions.

P Riehl ,

I love this app!

I’ve used Daisy Disk since early 2013, and it is a delight: visually appealing, and an extremely effective way of finding and removing clutter on your computer, or identifying space hogs that might be candidates for optimizing. If you care about that sort of thing (and I understand if you don’t), this is a superb tool, and well worth the price.

UPDATE October 2018: from 5 stars to 2. Disk Xray Lite lacks the visual appeal, but is free and 10-15X faster at scanning large directories (which in my case are not even that large: <90 GB).

UPDATE November 2018: I appreciate the developer’s response, which I received by email (don’t know where to find it here). I did another test: Daisy Disk scanned my entire home directory in 48 seconds; Disk Xray Lite in 08 seconds (OK, only 6X faster). The latter is also visual, despite what the developers of Daisy Disk imply, and in fact while not as pretty, it is actually easier to visualize file sizes because they display as horizontal bars. I’m pretty sure the human brain is better equipped to compare the size of bars oriented in one direction to “pie slices” all oriented in different directions.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback, but the reported numbers may be inexact. I've just launched the said app and it's completed scanning of my home folder in 31.4 sec, while DaisyDisk scanned the same folder in 10.4 sec, i.e. 3 times faster. Maybe you were misled by the intermediate scanning results that the other app shows during scanning? Note that those are not really useful until the scanning completes. In all our tests, DaisyDisk has demonstrated the fastest scanning performance, in range of 3 to 20 times faster than other apps, because we put special emphasis on the scanning speed and our engineers have developed unique know-hows to achieve this. Also note that the scanning speed, while an important factor, is not all you'd want from a disk analyzing app. The visualization is what determines your efficiency of finding and removing the biggest space wasters. And again, according to our experiments, DaisyDisk's map is proving to be the most efficient method of the data presentation, in most cases. In short, it's because human mind compares visual objects' sizes much faster and easier than it reads strings of text and numbers. We appreciate your feedback and if you have additional questions or suggestions, feel free to contact our support!

UPDATE Nov 11, 2018: Thanks for the additional information. I have repeated my experiment on a clean machine and realized that the said app does not scan the entire selected folder. It skips big chunks of data, and for this reason it sometimes misleadingly appears faster. In my case, it missed the ~/Library folder, skipping 5.4 GB out of the total 5.7 GB. Actually, a lot of other folders were missing in the report too. Please, could you compare the output to DaisyDisk? Overall, when scanning actually happens, the speed is always way slower than DaisyDisk. Speaking of bars vs sectors: indeed, linear bars could be implemented as an alternative design that allows to compare sizes visually, however in that particular implementation you have a text table extended with bars, which is a suboptimal combination in many regards. I could go into lengths discussing different designs that we have considered before we landed at the sunburst map, but not sure the reviews are the right place for it :) The question is all about efficiency and easiness of use, in all senses.

App Privacy

The developer, Software Ambience Corp., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.

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