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How to find large files on your Mac

Published 2026-11-11

The fastest way is Terminal: find ~ -type f -size +500M -exec du -h {} + | sort -hr | head -20 lists every file over 500 MB in your home folder, biggest first. Finder can do the same with a search filter, and Storage settings has a built-in review list for documents. Large files then need a second look, since size alone does not tell you whether a file is safe to delete, and several kinds of file report a size that is not what they occupy on disk.

Method 1: Finder search

  1. In Finder press Cmd+F. Under "Search:" choose This Mac.
  2. Click the + at the right, then set the first dropdown to File Size and the second to is greater than. Enter 500 MB.
  3. Switch to List view (Cmd+2) and click the Size column header to sort largest first.

Add a second rule: choose Other... in the first dropdown, pick System files, and set it to are included. Without that rule, Finder skips most of Library, where the largest files often are. Finder also ranks single items, so it will not tell you that a folder of 40,000 small files adds up to 30 GB.

The other built-in route is System Settings > General > Storage. Click the info button next to Documents to see Large Files, Downloads and unsupported apps sorted by size. This only covers some places.

Method 2: find and du in Terminal

find ~ -type f -size +500M -exec du -h {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -20

Read it left to right. find ~ -type f walks your home folder for regular files. -size +500M keeps those over 500 mebibytes (about 524 MB, and BSD find rounds sizes up to the unit before comparing). du -h prints each one's real disk use. sort -hr sorts human-readable sizes, biggest first. Output looks like this:

124M	/Users/you/Downloads/Report.mov
 59M	/Users/you/Downloads/old-project.zip

Change the limit with +100M or +2G. Search a smaller area to run faster, for example ~/Downloads ~/Movies. To see the largest folders instead of files:

du -hd1 ~ 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head -10

Then repeat inside the biggest one. Two levels of this usually finds the culprit.

Permissions. Terminal cannot read protected folders (Mail, Messages, Safari, Photos data, iPhone backups) without Full Disk Access under Privacy & Security. The commands then skip them quietly, because the 2>/dev/null hides the "Operation not permitted" messages. Remove that redirect once to see what you are missing.

Method 3: Spotlight from Terminal

mdfind -onlyin ~ 'kMDItemFSSize > 500000000'

This is instant because it queries the Spotlight index instead of walking the disk, and it prints paths without sizes. The catch is the index: folders Spotlight excludes or has not indexed yet are missing, so it can return fewer files than find. Use it for a quick look and find to be sure.

Large and old

A 3 GB file you opened yesterday is a different decision from one nobody has opened in two years. Spotlight records when a file was last opened:

mdls -name kMDItemLastUsedDate ~/Downloads/some-file.zip

Modified time is not the same. find ~ -type f -size +500M -mtime +365 lists large files not changed in a year, which includes files you open often but never edit, such as a film or a reference PDF. Use kMDItemLastUsedDate to judge whether something is still used.

What the sizes mean

Most articles list a command and move on, then readers act on numbers that are wrong. Four cases to know:

  • Sparse files. Virtual machine disks and Docker's Docker.raw report a large logical size and occupy less. ls -l shows the logical size and du shows what is allocated. Trust du. Deleting the file frees the allocated amount.
  • Packages. Photos libraries, .app bundles, .sparsebundle and Final Cut libraries are folders that Finder shows as one item. find -type f lists the thousands of files inside and never the total. Use du -sh ~/Pictures/*.photoslibrary for the whole. Do not delete files inside a Photos library by hand.
  • Clones. Two files made by Duplicate in Finder can share blocks on APFS. Both report full size and deleting one frees much less than its size.
  • iCloud placeholders. A file that is "Optimise Mac Storage" evicted still shows its full size in Finder and uses almost none on disk. Deleting it does not free space and deletes it from iCloud as well.

Deciding what to delete

Move candidates to the Bin and not rm. For each file ask whether you could get it again (an installer, a movie you bought, a download), whether another app refers to it (a project's media, a Music library), and whether a copy exists elsewhere. Check twice before removing virtual machine images, simulator disks, .photoslibrary files, mail stores, backups and anything inside a project folder. A move to the Bin is recoverable until you empty it. rm is not.

Using Spotless for this

Spotless draws a space map where every folder is a block sized by what it uses, and lists large and old files (50 MB and over) for you to review. It reads the same disk, so it hits the same permission limits. Without Full Disk Access it shows what it could read. Items you remove go to the Trash first, and the Photos library is permanently locked from cleanup. It does not tell you whether a file is important to you. See the space map.

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