Link the /var directory to a directory on a file system with moreĭisk space. In summary, if you wanted to see how to show the largest files under a directory on MacOS, Unix, and Linux systems, I hope this is helpful.Note - If you run out of space in the /var directory, do not symbolically Their solution was very close, but just needed a minor change or two to work on MacOS. Note: I was pointed towards this solution by this page. In that command, head -30 prints the first 30 results, but then the tail command shows only the last 10 files, which displays files 21-30 in the end. To show files 21-30 you can add in the tail command, like this:ĭu -a * | sort -r -n | head -30 | tail -10 To show the first 20 files/directories you’d use this command:

Users/Al/Music> du -a * | sort -r -n | head -10Ĩ049464 iTunes/iTunes Music/Unknown ArtistĦ101880 iTunes/iTunes Music/Unknown Artist/Unknown Album Variations of that `du` commandĪs mentioned, that command shows how to display the largest 10 files and folders under the current OS X directory. In the Music folder on my Mac the command and output look like this: After that, head -10 shows only the first ten lines of output. The Unix/Linux command that worked for me on my MacOS system is this:ĭu is the disk usage command, and the -a flag says, “Display an entry for each file in a file hierarchy.” Then I use the sort command to sort the du output numerically and in reverse. A du/sort command to show the largest files under a directory on Mac OS X Solution: Use the Unix du (disk usage) command, and sort its output.

MacOS FAQ: From the command line, how do I show the largest files under a directory on macOS (and Linux/Unix systems).

Biggest folder