Before High Sierra, I found it very useful to go to Finder, pick "All My Files" from the lefthand sidebar, and list all files in descending order by size in order to identify large files I could delete to save storage space.
As I gather from other threads here, "All My Files" has been removed in High Sierra. Any suggestions on the simplest way to set up a search that accomplishes the same thing?
Yes, there's some files it excludes... You can do a Directory by directory - would be better in spotlight or terminal.
However, you can SAVE a specific bookmark preference if you will by taking the time to set them up. You can select certain files over X in size.
Finder new folder and follow the pics to set yours up.
In the new finder window you just opened, go to home.
Then file find:
Your new Finder Open Window in your USER home when looking to find will look like this:
Then go to this section and click OTHER:
In the long menu of options to search - you can scroll to find it or simply type size in the search box on right of window;
Elect Greater or Less than for your size.... Select your size in kb/mb/gb, in my example I put 600MB files;
Save your profile if you're inclined.
mdfind "kMDItemFSSize > 500000000"
This also works
This also lists other things to search for: find / -size +10M -ls
When I followed that procedure, Finder segregated the results by type
Set the Arrangement to None.
The Search window works the same as any other. You can Arrange and Sort by various criteria. Arrange means "Group" into categories. You can Arrange and then sort within the arrangement groups. Or, you can only arrange or you can only sort.
If you need to use that view often, click the Save button and check the box to keep it in the sidebar.
Open a Finder Window and select your home folder.
in the search field type *
Switch to List View.
If not already there, add the size column by right-clicking on the headers and selecting it from the list (or cmd-j, check box)
Click on the Size header until it sorts by Size Descending (⌵ pointing down).
Or terminal:
mdfind "kMDItemFSSize >$[800*800*800]"
Thanks for the suggestions. The first approach using Finder didn't work out, as the largest files on my system don't show up under Recents, and choosing another folder/device in the left sidebar didn't seem to work.
The terminal command seems promising, but it reports only filenames and omits the size of each file, which is a pretty critical piece of information in deciding whether to trash large items. I looked at the man page for mdfind but couldn't find a way to do that -- was I missing something?
Barney-15E, thanks for the suggestion. When I followed that procedure, Finder segregated the results by type
(Documents, Mail & Messages, Images, PDF Documents, Music, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Developer, Other) -- and entirely missed some of the largest files on the machine, such as multi-gigabyte virtual machine files. Does anything come to mind that would cause it to capture those, and to report the results entirely by file size, not by type?
Barney, that's an improvement and does away with the grouping into categories. Now, however, I see that even when I select my home directory or the Mac disk, it is not including some very large files, including some that are in my Documents folder.
Thanks much, Mac_slide, this is finally producing the Mac-wide list of large files in descending order by size that I was looking for.
You mention saving a profile. Is there a way to save this search so that I don't have to go through all those steps every time I want to use it? If it could, say, become an icon in Finder, that would be awesome.
Thanks much, Mac_slide, this is finally producing the Mac-wide list of large files in descending order by size that I was looking for.
You mention saving a profile. Is there a way to save this search so that I don't have to go through all those steps every time I want to use it? If it could, say, become an icon in Finder, that would be awesome.
I don't know why it would exclude certain files. Spotlight creates the list, so it may be a problem with the index. Are they new files? Shouldn't matter, but…
Actually, I found the "Save" button at upper right in the Finder window, and now have that as a saved search in the lefthand sidebar. Thanks again for the help!
You can ALSO later EDIT that with new criteria - BUT remember to save it.
CLICK add to sidebar.
It will then look like a cog:
Which you can Control Click to change.
How to list all files listed in descending order of size?
