User Guide

Tips and tricks

DaisyDisk is friendly to both new and power-users, but some extra knowledge can make your work with the application even more productive.

Time savers

  • Cmd-clicking any file or folder in DaisyDisk reveals it in Finder.
  • Using keyboard shortcuts and multi-touch gestures can boost your productivity.
  • Being a native Mac application, DaisyDisk supports drag and drop: you can drag disks or folders into the window to scan them, and drag and drop files to the Collector in order to collect them for further deletion.
  • You can scan multiple disks and folders at the same time.
  • DaisyDisk automatically prevents parallel scanning of multiple volumes of the same disk and scans them one by one when it is more beneficial.
  • Scanning as administrator at all times is counter-productive unless you have multiple user accounts on your Mac.
  • Star the folders you scan often.
  • Scanning time of a disk only depends on the number of files on that disk, not on its capacity.
  • Typical scanning time for a Mac HD volume is ~5 minutes.
  • Time Machine volumes usually take 15 to 45 minutes to scan due to the huge number of files they contain.

Deleting files

  • Files in the Collector remain intact until you click Delete.
  • DaisyDisk does its best to prevent accidental deletion of essential files, but be careful: double-check the list of folders before you click Delete.
  • Once a file is deleted by DaisyDisk, it’s gone forever. The only chance to recover it is to use a special undelete software.
  • Empty Trash beforehand: it may contain tens of gigabytes of useless stuff.
  • Moving files to the Trash does not free up space; you’ll have to empty the Trash.
  • Deleting files on disk images does not decrease the image’s size.

How stuff works

  • If you see a disk in Finder, you can scan it in DaisyDisk.
  • The application calculates the physical file size, not logical one (except on network drives).
  • Bundles appear as solid objects, just like Finder.
  • DaisyDisk updates the amount of free space for each volume in real time, this may be handy for monitoring.
  • Scanned snapshots may take hundreds of megabytes of your RAM, so if you’ve got only 2GB of RAM or less, at times you may want to tell DaisyDisk to “forget” some scan results.
  • DaisyDisk automatically updates the disk map if you delete any files in-app, but it cannot track the changes you make from the Finder or other software.
  • The built-in preview is powered by the Quick Look, so it also picks up any plugins you install.
  • (hidden space) and …smaller objects… are virtual items and work in a different way than files or folders.
  • You can scan FileVault-protected disks, but knowing a bit of stuff under the hood never hurts.