Understanding the disk map

The sunburst disk map may look unusual at first, but very soon you’ll get used to it and appreciate all its benefits.

Think of the map as if it was a flower. Colored petals are folders, grey ones are files. The wider is a petal, the larger is the object it represents. For your convenience, all segments are already sorted by size. The files and folders that are too thin to be visible separately are consolidated into semi-transparent petals.

Navigation in DaisyDisk is both flexible and easy to use. Just point to any folder to see its content on the sidebar. Click to drill down. Want to navigate to the parent folder? Simply click in the very center of the disk map.

The breadcrumb control helps you not to get lost in your data:

The sidebar panel displays your files and folders in a list view, so you can see the name of each object:

Pointing to a folder on the disk map reveals it on the sidebar and vice versa. You can use all three components in any combinations, they work really great together. Furthermore, you can use keyboard shortcuts and multi-touch gestures to speed up your work with DaisyDisk.

In addition to files and folders, the sidebar list may contain the following objects:

• …smaller objects… are large groups of small files consolidated into a single item. You can click on it to reveal the complete list, which may sometimes include tens of thousands of files.
• Struck out files or folders have been deleted, renamed or moved outside DaisyDisk. If you see a lot of struck out objects, it is an indication to rescan the disk or folder, to let DaisyDisk take account of the recent changes.
• Purple files and folders are restricted, i.e. they cannot be measured unless you scan the disk as administrator.
• (hidden space) is a virtual item that may be displayed in certain cases. It indicates that there is a significant amount of disk space hiding in restricted folders.