Get a grander perspective

Peruse a bird’s eye view of every file on your Mac

Apple’s tools help you to quickly remove big documents from your Mac, but GrandPerspective does something different.

Run a scan and it visually describes the space taken up by files and apps on your Mac, representing every single one of them in one window.

Its grid view might overwhelm at first, and it’s not as pretty as the somewhat similar DaisyDisk (£9.99, daisydiskapp.com). However, being able to see the relative size of every item on your Mac at once really does give you perspective over how much space some of them take up.

Just be mindful when using the app to not remove anything you’re unsure about, such as items in macOS’s various Library folders. For the most part, stick to media files (video, audio, books and comics), installers, and apps you may no longer use.

GrandPerspective is available for free from bit.ly/mfgpsf, or you can buy it for £1.99 from the Mac App Store.

1 Start a scan

Go to File > Scan Folder and select a location to scan, whether that’s the root of your Mac’s drive or your user folder. Click Scan. During your first scan, GrandPerspective may request access to things like Photos.

2 View your scan

Scanning will take several minutes to complete. Once it’s done, you’ll see a colourful grid of rectangles. In short, the larger ones are larger files. Click one to see its size and path in the status bar beneath the grid.

3 Manipulate files

Any selected file can be previewed using the Quick Look button or revealed in Finder. If you want to delete it, click Delete, and it’ll be sent to the Trash. Note: the grid will not update unless you click Rescan.

4 Change focus

Initially, GrandPerspective has you select and work with individual files. But you can use the ‘Move focus up’ button to select the containing folder. ‘Move focus down’ drills down again, and ‘Reset focus’ reverts to defaults.