What is it?
GrandPerspective is a wonderful tiny disk utility that shows you in a graphical way disk usage so you can deal with the large files/folders that take up space. Below is the description the app store. It is well worth the $1.99 that the author is charging. You can certainly find it for ‘free’ but why not pay for an app that costs less than a small cup of Peet’s regular coffee.
Why should you use it?
I recently started a ‘small’ project around cleaning my digital landfill of files and folders. My goal is to get a decent backup strategy that starts with my most important files (family pictures and videos) and continues with less valuable files/folders. In my pursuit of the 3-2-1 backup I needed to examine my polluted Dropbox folder for large files/folders to make a determination if they were garbage or useful data that I wanted to keep (I plan to detail my approach in a future post or course…but first I need to get through this exhausting cleaning).
How to use it?
So let’s get to it – how do you use GrandPerspective?
Note: this will be a quick walk-through of this software. If you want more detailed usage information – check out GrandPerspective’s Help (per the image below).
Go to the app store and get it
You can get it from here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grandperspective/id1111570163?mt=12. Believe me when I say that it’s a bargain for $1.99.
Launch GrandPerspective
When you first launch GrandPerspective, you will be greeted with a small welcome window. It will look like the following image except that there won’t be any locations in the ‘Repeat a recent scan’ section.
Choose the “Scan Other Folder” button.
Choose the folder that you want to scan
In my case, I chose my ‘Dropbox’ folder, but you can choose any folder you wish. Then press the ‘Scan’ button.
GrandPerspective will QUICKLY scan your folder and produce a tree map
The program is amazingly quick at scanning a folder of any size. The result is a tree map that looks like one of those quilts with different squares and colors.
Moving your mouse across the treemap shows you files/folder sizes
GrandPerspective has amazing file resolution in terms of the mapping between squares and files and folders.
When you move your mouse, you will see a large border that points to a top level directory (1). Within this block, you’ll see sub-folders that are delineated by different colors (2).
In the example below the mouse cursor is within a gold block (3). This particular block is a large file whose size is 1.24 GB. Relative to other files/folders – this particular file is HUGE. Let’s take a more careful look at this file.
Getting more detail on the file – 1
In the image below – I expanded the GrandPerspective window so that it shows the full path to my large file (notice my mouse cursor is on the gold block as mentioned above). The information bar at the bottom of the screen shows me the exact path and file name. As I look at this file, I remember that this large file is a ScreenFlow file of a screencast answer to a student’s JavaScript question.
Let’s look at even more detail of the file by right-clicking on it.
Getting more detail on the file – 2
When I right click on the gold block (my ScreenFlow file) I have three choices:
- “Reveal in Finder” (the one that I choose): opens the Finder to the location of the specified file/folder
- “Open with Finder”: opens the file with whatever application is the default. In other words, select this option for my ScreenFlow file opens the file directly in ScreenFlow.
- “Copy path”: Copies the path that is shown at the bottom part of the screen.
I’ve chosen the “Reveal in Finder” option.
Getting more detail on the file – 3
GrandPerspective now opens the folder that contains my chosen file (the gold block from the above picture), and it conveniently highlights the file.
At this point I can choose whether I want to keep it, toss it or move it somewhere else.
Where to go next – lots of different options
GrandPerspective has many options, but the above steps are the basics. You can delete files/folders with it too, but I would suggest doing this within the Finder, so you’re sure of what you’re doing. To get details about additional features – check the Help menu or the GrandPerspective site.
Who is it made by?
I always like to know a software creator’s background because it typically reflects in the DNA of the software.
GrandPerspective is made by Erwin Bonsma who seems to be very awesome. I know – you’re wondering how I could know that. Well – check out his home page for some neat visual work. You can clearly tell that this guy loves to work with visual things (puzzles, animations, 3D printing, and software) and it reflects in the simplicity and power of GrandPerspective.
Some other places that Erwin frequents (based on links from his home page):
- https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eriban/159826174218415
- http://eriban.deviantart.com/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/eriban/
- http://www.shapeways.com/shops/eriban
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUBkFE0xZawTFdQEztd5J3g
- https://www.tumblr.com/blog/eriban
Should you buy it?
The short answer: YES! (if you need to find space in your digital landfill known as your hard disk)
The long answer: Probably. It’s a nicely artisan-ish made app that does one thing very well. It is also very (very) reasonably priced.
eli4d.com 
