How much do you know about your Mac? It depends on why you are using your computer. If you are not a computer geek, perhaps you don’t know much about your hard drive storage. But over time, after daily using the Mac, you may face the problem when “Your disk is almost full”. In this case, a hard drive analyzer software can help you to find out what exactly takes up space on it. In this article, you’ll find out the best disk space analyzers for Mac and how to use them.

How to Check Disk Space on a Mac?

You don’t need any additional software to check disk space on your Mac. Just follow these simple steps:

1. In the Apple menu select About This Mac.
2. Choose the Storage tab.
3. After calculating, you will see a colored bar, where each segment measures the capacity of files type on Disk.

You can click Manage and follow recommendations for optimizing Mac disk space.

Six Apps to Analyze Disk Space

If you want to explore your Mac Disk space more fully, you can use special applications for that. In this article, we provide a list of apps for that task. They can analyze the disk usage in detail and quickly show the results of what is littering your disk. Most of them are smart and handy, take up little space on your Mac, and have a simple interface. Read on to find out the most suitable app for your needs.

1. Disk Expert

If you to need not only analyze your Mac’s storage space, but clean up it as well, there is another suitable app for you - Disk Expert. This app allows you to scan not only a Mac hard drive, but any external drive or a folder for your convenience. Complete the following steps to use this intuitive application:

1. Launch Disk Expert.
2. Click on the arrow icon next to the HD or folder.
3. Select a sector you want to skim on the interactive sunburst diagram.
4. The items of each sector are arranged by size in the list on the right.
5. Drag a selected item to the Drop Files section.
6. Move the collected files to external storage or remove them to Trash.

2. Disk Space Analyzer

Disk Space Analyzer is the application from Nektony software company. This application scans your Mac Hard Disks and represents the results as an interactive colored diagram. Each colored section coincides with files and folders on the Mac disk. So, it is very easy to determine where the largest files are located. Make a right-click on the segment to reveal each folder and subfolder in Finder. Then you can decide to delete an item or move it to the external drive.

Disk Space Analyzer takes up 5.5MB and is suitable for OS X 10.8 or later. You can download the app from the App Store or purchase it from the Nektony website for $7.99. Also, it provides a free trial version.

3. Daisy Disk

DaisyDisk is the next application that analyzes Disk space and shows the result in a visual interactive map. This space analyzer scans disks and folders, and shows the list of items, arranged by size, so you can quickly get rid of the largest files. You can also open items in Finder before the removal. Complete these four steps to examine your Mac Disk:

1. Launch the application.
2. Click the Scan button.
3. Overview the biggest files in the list on the right.
4. Drag and drop them to the Collector in the bottom left corner and click the Delete button to remove files permanently.

DaisyDisk takes up 10MB and is suitable for OS X 10.10 and higher. You can download the DaisyDisk application from the App Store or official website for $9.99. The free trial is available with usage limits.

4. WhatSize

One more application that measures Mac Disk space is WhatSize. This software not only scans Disks and folders, but cleans up junk files and detects duplicate files. The use of this program is similar to previous ones:

1. Launch the app.
2. Select an HD or folder you want to measure.
3. In a few minutes, you will see a directory of your folders, arranged by size. You can view directory data as Browser, Outline, Table or Pie Chart for your convenience.

You can select an item, reveal it in Finder, or move to Trash.

You can download the application from the official website for $29.99. WhatSize takes up 16.5MB and is suitable for OS X 10.4 and higher. Note, that the last upgrade version 6.6.3 for macOS High Sierra is a paid one. You can also try a free trial for 30 days.

5. Disk Drill

Disk Drill is a free application from the CleverFiles software company, which helps to recover data. Moreover, it finds duplicates, analyzes HD and removes useless items. Complete these steps to start the scanning process:

1. Launch the application.
2. Select the Clean up tab.
3. Click on the Scan button to start analyzing.
4. Folders directory is arranged by size.

You can open each folder to overview the items, find large, useless files, and remove them.

Disk Drill takes up 22MB and is suitable for OS X 10.8 and higher. You can download this app for free from the website or purchase a Pro version for $89.

6. OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper is the simplest Disk analyzer that scans your Mac hard drive, available from the OmniGroup software company. This free app scans your data in a few minutes and you can use it as simply as:

1. Launch the OmniDiskSweeper app.
2. Select the Drive you want to scan and click Sweep Drive.
3. In the newly opened window, you will see a directory of the folders, arranged by size.
4. There are two options: open in Finder and move to Trash.

There are different versions of OmniDiskSweeper application on the website, that are suitable for OS X 10.4 and later. The OS X 10.12 version takes up 17.4MB on disk space.

These six applications analyze your Mac disk usage and some of them provide a cleanup option. So, let's summarize the facts in this Disk Space Analyzers comparative chart.

Conclusion

Now you know a bit more about your Mac HD: How to analyze it and how to clear disk space, especially when it is almost full. We have shared a list of applications which can help you to see what’s taking up your disk space. According to the comparison table, the winner of Mac Disk space analyzers is Disk Expert, as it is Apple certified application, it provides a user-friendly interface, fast scanning algorithm and supports all types of volumes to scan.
We wish you a safe and fast cleanup of your Hard Drive so that you can optimize your Mac’s performance and enjoy working on your device.