How to determine the size of a file or folder

To find the size of a computer file or folder, select your operating system in the list below and follow the instructions.

Microsoft Windows users

Below are the different steps you can take to determine the total size of a file, multiple files, or folder on a computer running Microsoft Windows.

1. Locate and highlight the file(s) or folder that you want to determine the size.
2. Right-click the file and click Properties.
3. The image below shows that you can determine the size of the file or files you have highlighted from in the file properties window. In this example, the chrome.jpg file is 18.5 KB (19,032 bytes), and that the size on disk is 20.0 KB (20,480 bytes).

or

1. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer.
2. Make Windows display file properties by clicking View at the top of the window, and then selecting Details. Once this action is completed, Explorer displays all your files, their sizes, type, and last modified date.

• How to keep my Windows file listing the same in all folders.

or

1. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer.
2. Move to the directory containing your file.
3. To see the total space of the current directory, view the size of the directory on the right side of the status bar. Otherwise, highlight the file you want to see the size of and look at the status bar.

macOS users

1. Navigate to the file or folder whose size you want to view. If you're unsure of its location, you can use the Finder application in the Dock at the bottom of your screen.

2. Click the file or folder so that it is selected.
3. Press Command+I on your keyboard.
4. A window opens showing the size of the file or folder near the top.

MS-DOS and Windows command line users

The following instructions contain information on the different methods a user can utilize to view the size of a file or files in MS-DOS.

1. Move to the directory of the file whose size you want to view.

• How to change a directory or open a folder.

2. Once in the directory, perform one of the following commands.

dir myfile.txt

The command above shows the size of the single file myfile.txt.

dir *.txt

The command above lists all text files in the current directory, as shown in the picture below.

As seen in the example above, this shows there are five txt files in the current directory with a total size of 124,264 bytes.

• For additional wildcard examples, see our wildcard definition.
• See the cd command and dir command pages for further information about each command.

Linux and Unix users

Below are some different methods a *nix user can use to determine a size of a file on their computer.

1. Move to the directory of the file whose size you want to view.

• How to change a directory or open a folder.

2. Once in the directory, perform one of the following commands.

Command one example

ls -l help.html

Command one output

-rw-r----- 1 comphope www 11567230 Nov 24 01:12 log.txt

In the output example above, the 11567230 is the size of the file. For a more user-friendly output, use the du command, as shown below.

Command two example

du -h log.txt

Command two output

12M log.txt

To see the total size of multiple files, type the following.

du -ch *.txt

The example command above lists every .txt file in the current directory. It also lists the size of each file and the total size of all the files combined.