How to Get the Size of a File or Folder in Mac OS
By using the Get Info panel in Mac OS to be able to quickly discover the storage size of any given file or folder on a Mac. You can access the Get Info panel through a menu item, or a keyboard shortcut. The tricks work the same on all versions of Mac OS and Mac OS X, as the Get Info capability has been around on the Mac
Need to know the size of a particular file? Or have you ever wondered how large a particular folder is on a Mac? With a simple trick you an quickly get the size of any file, folder, or item as found within the Finder file system of Mac OS.
Here are three ways you can check the size of files on your Mac. Folders, too!
Add Size column to List view in Finder
List view is my favorite view in Finder because it offers the most information, including file size. If you don’t see a Size column in your Finder window, you can add it by control-clicking on the headers that are visible — Kind, Date Last Opened and the like — and clicking Size. You can then click on the Size header to order the list by size. You can also drag the headers to rearrange them.
Get Info panel
For any file or folder, you can quickly view its size by control-clicking it and selecting Get Info. In the top right of the Get Info panel, you’ll see its size. You can also highlight a file in Finder and use the keyboard shortcut Command-I to open the Get Info panel.
Arrange by Size
If you are looking to free up some space on your Mac, you can easily sort files of any Finder window by size. I have found this is particularly useful for the Recents folder. When I click the Size header to sort by size, it doesn’t show me all of my files, but if I click the gear icon at the top of the window and select Arrange By… Size, then I see all of my files sorted into different tiers by file size, starting with 1GB to 10GB files at the top.
- In a Detailed way you can find
- From the Finder of Mac OS, navigate to the parent directory containing the file or folder you want to get the size of
- Select the file or folder you wish to retrieve the size of
- Pull down the “File” menu and choose “Get Info”
The items total size will be revealed in the top corner of the Get Info window, and lower you will find both the total file size of all items within that folder as well as the item count for the folder