A free, open-source disk space analyzer for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Scan your drive, explore it as treemaps and sunbursts, mark the cruft, and free up space. A modern alternative to Disk Inventory X and Daisy Disk.
Treemap, sunburst, or flat table — Daisy Disk-style sunburst included. Canvas-rendered at native DPR so every pixel counts.
14 file categories, a cool→warm heatmap by modification age, or folder coloring for treemap view.
Mark files as you browse, review the queue, then trash or delete with a two-step confirmation.
⌘-click files across all views. Drag-to-select on the treemap. Inspect and act on batches.
Case-insensitive search over the entire scan tree, sorted by size with keyboard navigation.
macOS, Linux, and Windows. Platform-native file manager, shortcuts, and trash integration.
Ansel never makes network requests. It operates entirely on your local filesystem with the permissions you already have.
Every release comes with build provenance attestations (SLSA) so you can verify the binary matches the source.
CodeQL SAST runs on every push and PR, covering both the Rust backend and JavaScript frontend.
All CI dependencies are pinned by commit hash. OpenSSF Scorecard runs weekly. Dependabot keeps things up to date.
Ansel measures on-disk allocation — how many blocks each file actually occupies (st_blocks × 512 on Unix). Finder reports logical file size. On top of that:
• Ansel’s “scanned” total counts partial blocks per file, so it will be higher than Finder’s “Used.”
• Ansel’s derived “free” space will be lower than Finder’s “Available” because Finder includes purgeable space (Time Machine local snapshots, caches) that the filesystem doesn’t count as free.
• Finder uses base-10 (decimal GB) while Ansel matches the platform convention — base-2 on Linux/Windows, base-10 on macOS.
Right-click → Open no longer works on recent macOS versions for unsigned apps. Instead:
1. Try to open the app (Gatekeeper will block it).
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll to the bottom — you’ll see a message that Ansel was blocked. Click Open Anyway.
4. Confirm the second dialog. Subsequent launches work normally.
Parts of ~/Library, /private/var, and other user home directories are protected by macOS’s Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) framework. Without Full Disk Access granted to the app, those subtrees come back as 0 bytes.
Grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, then re-scan.
APFS clones (copy-on-write duplicates) share blocks on disk, but each clone is counted with its own block tally by the filesystem. If you have many clones, this inflates the scanned total. This is a known limitation of how stat(2) reports allocation — it has no way to know which blocks are shared.
macOS, Linux, and Windows — with platform-appropriate file manager integration, keyboard shortcuts, and Trash / recycle-bin handling built in for each.
Ansel is still in beta and has mostly been tested on macOS. If you run into issues on Windows or Linux, please file a bug report — it helps a lot.
Yes. You’ll need Rust (stable), Node 20+, and pnpm. Then:
pnpm install → pnpm tauri dev
The first Rust compile takes ~30–60 seconds on Apple Silicon. Full instructions in the README.
Grab the latest release for your platform, or build from source.
Ansel is still in beta — rough edges included. If something breaks, file a bug report. Got an idea? Suggest a feature.
Ansel can delete files. It does exactly what you tell it to — there’s a two-step confirmation for permanent deletions, but the responsibility is still yours.
Unsigned build — see the FAQ for Gatekeeper instructions.