Daisydisk Hidden Space

DaisyDisk is a paid disk space analyzer for macOS.^[3] It displays a sunburst diagram of files on a hard drive to help with the location or deletion of large files.^[4] It can display previews of files using Quick Look.^[5][6][7] It also allows the user to look at the file directly in Finder, in order to delete it or move it elsewhere.^[8]

DaisyDisk will automatically refresh (without rescanning) the numbers or hidden and purgeable space after the system updates them globally. Also, just after you delete the purgeable space, you may temporarily see the hidden space being “borrowed” by the corresponding amount. Please allow some time (from few seconds to few minutes) before.

A quick scan in DaisyDisk typically reveals a big chunk of “hidden space“, which means the system is using more disk space than it’s possible to reveal by scanning, even with elevated permissions (scanning “as Administrator”). Jul 10, 2019  What's new in DaisyDisk 4.10: DaisyDisk now scans the local snapshots of the APFS file system and displays them inside the “hidden space” area. Now it’s much easier to deal with the hidden space, because the snapshots are often its largest component. You can now delete the snapshots by simple drag-and-drop, as with regular files. DaisyDisk's hidden space (if scanned as administrator) should be within 4-8GB limit for most Macs. If the numbers are larger, try repairing the volume as this may serve an indicator for file system errors. Taras Brizitsky, DaisyDisk's designer.

History[edit]

DaisyDisk was started in late 2008 by interaction designer Taras Brizitsky and programmer Oleg Krupnov. They built the codebase from scratch to try to achieve higher speeds than similar programs. They decided to use a sunburst diagram as it is perceived better than other ways of visualizing data (such as treemaps).^[9]

Features[edit]

DaisyDisk needs to scan the disk to create a map of its files and folders. Once the initial scan is completed, DaisyDisk keeps all displayed information up to date and reflects all changes to disk in real-time. DaisyDisk can scan multiple disks in parallel.

With v4.5^[10] of DaisyDisk, support for APFS was added.^[11]

Interface[edit]

DaisyDisk displays the contents as a color-coded sunburst diagram, resembling the petals of a daisy.^[12] The interface places the root of the hard drive at the center of this daisy, and displays a hierarchical structure of that hard drive's file system that radiates from that center. /future-auto-tune-download.html. This daisy is color-coded to differentiate between folders, while files themselves are always displayed as gray. In the right sidebar of the interface, DaisyDisk also provides a legend for these color codes. When hovering over a file or folder, the right sidebar of the interface updates with contextual information such as the file or folder name and their absolute path.^[13] When clicking on a folder on the daisy, a new daisy is displayed with the chosen folder as its root. The interface shows a 'breadcrumb trail' of the current folder right above the sunburst diagram.^[6]

DaisyDisk provides a Trash-like collector icon in the lower left of its interface where files and folders can dragged and dropped for deletion.^[13]

As of DaisyDisk v3, a specialized version of the app exists for Mac users with Retina Displays.^[14]

Integration[edit]

One of the ways DaisyDisk integrates with the Mac features is through its support of the Quick Look function, which is included in Mac OS X v10.5 'Leopard' and later. Hovering over any file or folder in DaisyDisk's interface and pressing space bar utilizes Quick Look and displays additional information about that file or folder in regards to its location and contents.^[12]

References[edit]

1. ^'DaisyDisk Release Notes'. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
2. ^'DaisyDisk Blog'. Software Ambience.
3. ^'DaisyDisk 4.6.2 free download for Mac'. MacUpdate. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
4. ^'DaisyDisk 4 Review'. Macworld. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
5. ^'DaisyDisk: Tom's Mac Software Pick'. Lifewire. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
6. ^ ^ab'DaisyDisk: Futuristic Data Visualization'. Mac.AppStorm. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
7. ^'How to identify the biggest space wasters on your Mac with DaisyDisk'. iDownloadBlog. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
8. ^'Make Your HD Bigger with DaisyDisk for Mac [Review]'. Cult of Mac. Retrieved 11 March 2019.
9. ^'An Evaluation of Space-Filling Information Visualizations for Depicting Hierarchical Structures'(PDF). Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2 June 2010.
10. ^'Top 5 questions about APFS and macOS High Sierra asked by Mac users'. DaisyDisk Blog. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
11. ^'How to free up disk space in macOS High Sierra'. Cult of Mac. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
12. ^ ^ab'Review: DaisyDisk: Disk Visualization and Analyzer Tool for the Mac'. aboutTechnology. Retrieved 13 November 2014.
13. ^ ^ab'Make Your HD Bigger with DaisyDisk for Mac [Review]'. Cult of Mac. Retrieved 13 November 2014.
14. ^'DaisyDisk Blog'. Software Ambience. 7 September 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2019.

Daisydisk Hidden Space Furniture

Mar 11, 2020

[Important update] DaisyDisk 4.10 adds support of APFS Snapshots

Hidden Space Mac Daisydisk

Ever since macOS Catalina was introduced, many Mac users noticed that their disks eventually get full without obvious reason. A quick scan in DaisyDisk typically reveals a big chunk of “hidden space“, which means the system is using more disk space than it’s possible to reveal by scanning, even with elevated permissions (scanning “as Administrator”).

The reason for this problem is that macOS is making temporary backups of the system, so called local snapshots, temporarily locking big amounts of disk space in an area of the disk that is fully opaque to the users. Eventually when the snapshots get transferred to the permanent storage, such as the Time Capsule, or as the snapshots become too old and get replaced by newer ones, macOS releases the disk space. However, the backup process is continuous and therefore there is always a certain amount of disk space that is locked by macOS for the snapshots.

This is how macOS Catalina works and it’s not supposed to even be a problem or require any maintenance from the user. However, in certain cases, you just need to free up the space urgently, and it’s quite confusing that you don’t have control over a big chunk of your disk.

Daisydisk Hidden Space Furniture

Thankfully, the new version of DaisyDisk (4.10) is making it much easier to reveal the macOS’ hidden space, and for the part that cannot be revealed – understand its internal structure and even provide tools to reclaim it by demand.

In particular, the new DaisyDisk cuts down the amount of hidden space by revealing some obscure system items such as non-linked content of the “firmlinked” Data volume (under /System/Volumes/Data), the virtual memory volume (under /private/var/VM) and some other.

Besides, DaisyDisk now shows a breakdown of the hidden space that includes the following items:

Daisydisk Hidden Spaces

• Purgeable space. (You can also see it in Finder and Disk Utility when you inquire info for a disk). This is an amount of disk space, as calculated by macOS itself, which includes the snapshots too. You can forcedly purge this space by deleting it in DaisyDisk.
• [NEW] Snapshots. This is a list of the temporary snapshots, with their estimated sizes. You can forcedly delete any or all of them in DaisyDisk, with a simple drag-and-drop, as you’d do with regular files.
• Other volumes. This is the remainder of the system volumes that are used internally by macOS.

All in all, the new DaisyDisk is making a huge step to return you understanding and control of your disk on macOS Catalina, and probably provides the most exhaustive and informative view of your disk compared to any other disk utility.

Daisydisk Hidden Space Mojave

The update is free of charge of the existing users. You can download it here. The full change log is here.