User Guide

Tips and tricks

DaisyDisk is friendly to both new and power-users, but with some extra knowledge you can make your work with the application even more productive.

Time savers

  • Using keyboard shortcuts and Multi-Touch gestures can boost your productivity.
  • Being a native Mac application, DaisyDisk supports drag and drop: you can drag disks or folders into the window to scan them, and drag and drop files to the Collector in order to collect them for further deletion.
  • You can scan multiple disks and folders at the same time.
  • Scanning as administrator at all times is counter-productive unless you have multiple user accounts on your Mac.
  • Star the folders you scan often.

Deleting files

  • Files in the Collector remain intact until you click Delete.
  • Once a file is deleted by DaisyDisk, it’s gone forever. The only chance to recover it is to use special software.
  • DaisyDisk does its best to prevent accidental deletion of essential files, but be careful: double-check the list of folders before you click Delete.
  • Empty Trash beforehand: it may contain tens of gigabytes of useless stuff.
  • Moving files to the Trash does not free up space; you’ll have to empty the Trash.
  • Deleting files on disk images does not decrease the image’s size. You’ll have to compact it manually.

How stuff works

  • If you see a disk in Finder, you can scan it in DaisyDisk.
  • Scan time depends on the number of files on that disk and disk type, not the disk’s capacity.
  • Time Machine volumes usually take 15 to 45 minutes to scan due to the huge number of files they contain.
  • The application calculates the physical file size, not logical one (except for network drives).
  • File packages (bundles) appear as solid objects, just like in Finder.
  • DaisyDisk updates the amount of free space for each volume in real time, this may be handy for monitoring.
  • DaisyDisk automatically updates the disk map if you delete any files in-app, but it cannot track the changes you make from Finder or other software.
  • Scanned snapshots may take hundreds of megabytes of your RAM, so if you’ve got only 2GB of RAM or less, at times you may want to tell DaisyDisk to “forget” some scan results.
  • The built-in preview is powered by the Quick Look, so it also picks up any plugins you install.
  • (hidden space) and …smaller objects… are virtual items and work in a different way than files or folders.