See where your disk space went, and find duplicate files by content. One portable .exe (about 8 MB) for Windows 10 and 11:
no installer, no dependencies, no telemetry. It never freezes while it scans, it explains the space it cannot see, and, if you
use Claude Code, Claude can help you decide what to clean, without ever being able to
delete anything on its own.
Built as the SpaceSniffer-style treemap many people recommend, for a Windows that has changed since.
Status: young. It has been run against real disks, and the test suite exercises the safety rules below against real
files. Expect rough edges in the polish; please tell us when you find any. Issues and pull requests are welcome.
The screenshots show a made-up demo disk, not a real one.
New here? Read the user guide: your first scan, reading the map, freeing space safely, what the
duplicate views mean, using Claude, and what to do when something goes wrong. This README is the reference.
Get it
Prebuilt exes are attached to each release: download DiskScout-<version>.exe and run it.
The exe is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may warn the first time ("More info" > "Run anyway"). Or build it yourself in one
command (see Building). It makes no network connections of its own, with one exception you start yourself,
Check for updates (see Updating): otherwise it only talks to its own window over 127.0.0.1.
Updating
DiskScout never updates itself and never checks on its own. To see whether a newer version exists, open the ⋯ menu and
choose Check for updates…. That asks GitHub for the number of the newest release, tells you what it found, and offers to
open the download page. GitHub sees your IP address, like any website you visit, and a request that says "DiskScout" and its
version number; nothing about your computer, disk or files is sent, and nothing is downloaded or installed.
To update, download the new DiskScout-<version>.exe, close DiskScout, and run the new one from the same folder, so the
diskscout-data folder beside it (settings, hash cache, deleted.log) carries on. If you connected Claude, press Connect
again from the new file: it remembers where the exe is.
What you get
Space is a treemap that fills in while it scans, so you can start exploring at once.
- Clean cuts. The window is greys and one blue; the colour is in the data. Files, and folders drawn as one piece, are
solid blocks in the colour of their kind (video magenta, archives mustard, images teal, documents blue, audio violet,
code green, programs brick red) with a white label. A folder drawn as one piece takes the colour of what is mostly inside
it (60% or more of one kind) and is slate when it is mixed. Folders that show what is inside them are dark panels with a
header strip, and Windows' own files are grey. The drive
tile at the top shows where the space went in one strip. Every block is labelled, and the legend under the map filters by kind.
- The legend is a real filter. Pick a kind under the map (Video, Images, Documents, ...) and the map shows only those
files, with every folder sized by the files of that kind inside it, so it works at any level, not only where single files
are drawn. Each kind says how much of it is in the folder you are looking at. Click it again to show everything. It
combines with the filter box.
- Live (the button next to View). The folder you have open keeps itself up to date: Windows tells the app when something
under it changes, and a moment after things go quiet that folder is read again, the same refresh as the Rescan button. Only
the open folder is followed (a whole drive changes too often to follow), refreshes slow down on busy folders, and it turns
itself off, saying so, if reading a folder again turns out to be heavy. Switching it on catches up on whatever changed while
it was off. Off, Rescan still refreshes a folder by hand. The choice is remembered.
- Light and dark themes follow Windows.
- Folders nest as deep as the pixels allow, each with a slim header (
name - size), like SpaceSniffer. A folder only opens
up when its header is a small part of it; smaller ones stay one solid block so the boxes keep their size. Double-click a
folder to open it, a file to show it in Explorer, right-click for more.
- A folder tree on the right: expand, collapse, walk it with the arrow keys. Back / forward / up / home buttons
(Alt+Left, Alt+Right, Backspace).
- The map adds up to the drive. Under View you can show or hide:
- System-managed items: the Recycle Bin,
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, System Volume Information, recovery.
(Windows' System attribute. Normal hidden folders like AppData stay visible.)
- Free space (green).
- Unaccounted space: what Windows counts as used but the scan could not see (shadow copies, protected system areas,
folders you told it to skip). Shown once the drive's scan is complete.
- The , and can be emptied from the map. Moving something to the bin frees no space, so it appears
in the bin's block instead of vanishing.
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