WhatSize: Tom’s Budget Software Pick

WhatSize is a handy application designed to excel at one simple task: discovering what is taking up so much room on your hard drive(s). WhatSize actually does a few things, not just one, but all are designed to help you figure out the sizes of files and folders on your drive.

To do this, WhatSize starts by displaying your hard drive’s size and available free space, or the sizes of folders on a drive you select. WhatSize can quickly calculate the size of a folder and all of its subfolders and files. It also organizes files and folders by size, so you can quickly see which items are hogging the available space.

WhatSize’s primary interface is a basic multi-pane tree view of your file system, similar to the Finder’s list view. It also offers a nifty view option that displays all of the items in a folder as a pie chart. You can drill down to see how data is organized.

The main advantages of WhatSize over OS X’s Finder and its list view are the speed at which the size of an item is calculated, and the ease of use of its interface. In addition to helping you discover just how you’re using the space on your hard drive, WhatSize can also help you free up space, if you’re running low.

WhatSize is available from ID-Design in two forms. The free version can measure an item up to 20 GB in size. The paid version ($12.99) has no measurement restrictions.

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