How to find large files on your Mac

Why large files are hard to find on a Mac

When a Mac runs short of space, the cause is often a small number of big items: video exports and screen recordings, disk images and installers in Downloads, old iPhone or iPad backups, virtual machine files, and project folders.

macOS has several ways to find them, but they live in different places and each one sees something slightly different:

• Storage settings lists large documents and your downloads, and is the quickest place to start.
• Finder search finds large files of any kind across your Mac, using a File Size attribute that's hidden behind the Other… menu.
• Finder List view shows which folders are biggest once you turn on folder size calculation. Use it to find a large app folder or a project made of many medium-sized files.
• Terminal can list every file above a given size in one go, if you're comfortable with it.

These tools find files. They don't tell you whether a file is safe to delete. That decision is yours, so every method below ends with you checking the file first.

Find large files with built-in macOS tools

These steps use the System Settings layout from macOS Ventura 13 onwards, including macOS 27.

Method 1: Storage settings

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, click General, then click Storage.
2. Wait for the categories to finish calculating.
3. Click the Info button (the small i) next to Documents.
4. Open Large Files and sort by Size. You can also sort by Name, Kind or Last Accessed.
5. To look at a file before you decide anything, use Show in Finder.

The same window has a Downloads list and a File Browser that shows how much space each folder uses. If an iOS Files category appears in Storage settings, it lists iPhone and iPad backups and software updates stored on this Mac.

Deleting from these lists is permanent: macOS warns that the item will be deleted immediately and that you can't undo this action. To keep a way back, open the file in Finder and move it to the Trash instead.

Method 2: Search by file size in Finder

1. Open a Finder window and press Command-F.
2. Under the search field, click This Mac.
3. Click the first pop-up menu (it usually says Kind) and choose Other….
4. Select File Size in the list and click OK.
5. Set the rule to is greater than, type a number such as 1, and choose GB. Lower the number if nothing appears.
6. Choose View › as List and click the Size column header to sort the results.

By default, Finder search leaves out system files. You can add the System files attribute from the same Other… list and set it to are included. For a space problem, though, the files you can safely act on are almost always in your own folders.

Method 3: Sort folders by size

1. Open your home folder in Finder (Go › Home).
2. Choose View › as List.
3. Choose View › Show View Options, turn on Calculate all sizes, and close the panel.
4. Click the Size column header. Open the largest folder and repeat until you find what's using the space.

Calculating folder sizes can take a while on a full disk. To use this setting in every folder, click Use as Defaults in the same panel.

Method 4: Terminal (optional, read-only)

This command lists files larger than 1 GB in your home folder. It only reads; it doesn't change or delete anything:

find ~ -type f -size +1G 2>/dev/null

macOS restricts access to some folders, so a few locations may be skipped.

Then decide, one file at a time

For each large file, ask yourself: do I still need this, can I download it again, and is there a copy somewhere else? Move files you want to keep to an external drive. Move the rest to the Trash in Finder, check that nothing you need went with them, then empty the Trash.