WinDirStat

Popularity

WinDirStat was downloaded more than 9 million times from the official source since its original release in October 2003 through 2011. As of August 2024, it was the third most downloaded "Filesystems" software on SourceForge, with more than 54,000 downloads per week.

Project status

As of early 2024, the project has been very active and released its first new version after many years.

Source code

Source code is provided for all released versions on the GitHub page in ZIP format.

WinDirStat is developed via Git revision control.

Features

• List of detected file extensions, and the percentage of space each file extension takes up.
• Each extension has its own color on the graphical map.
• Is able to scan internal, external and networked drives.
• Portable version besides the installer.
• User-created clean up jobs.
• Send report via email.

Version history

Media reception

FossHub (official download mirror of WinDirStat) reported 6,912,000 downloads in January 2019, being the most downloaded software from "Disk Analysers" category."

Steve Bass of PC World provided a brief review of the 1.1.2 release of WinDirStat, summarizing its usefulness: "Windirstat is [a] colorful and nifty tool to check the makeup of your hard drive -- especially if you're looking for immense files. It scans your drive and produces a treemap that shows each file as a colored rectangle that's proportional to the file's size..."

In 2006, WinDirStat was "Download of the day" on Lifehacker. Reviewer Adam Pash praised WinDirStat for its ability to easily clean up unnecessary files, by stating: "If you find a large file or two taking up loads of space that you had forgotten was there and don't need, it's easy to clean up directly from WinDirStat. "

CNET reviewed the most recent release of WinDirStat and gave it 5 of 5 stars. It called WinDirStat a "great piece of freeware" and noted: "It's one of those tools that you didn't know you needed until you started using it, but once installed, it's hard to imagine life without it..."

Gizmo's Freeware directory featured WinDirStat in a January 2010 list of best free disk analysis software with a 4 of 5 stars review, noting: "The open source program WinDirStat is [an] outstanding program. It uses three ways to display the disk usage: a directory list, a file extension list and a rectangular treemap. The visual presentation, overall usability and scan speed makes this a great tool to visualize disk usage."

The German computer magazine * c't (magazin für computertechnik)* published a review of WinDirStat with it bundled in a CD in October 2006.

In 2011, Jack Wallen from TechRepublic called WinDirStat: "one of those simple little apps you are going to be very thankful you have when you need it." He also highlighted its usability: "If space is an issue ... you will see just how much time this tool can save you." However, Jack Wallen criticized the documentation, stating: "The biggest issue with WinDirStat is the documentation. The minute you try to create your own user-configured cleanup routines you will quickly experience a complete lack of documentation, which makes the task rather challenging, if not impossible."

References

References

1. Yegulalp, Serdar. (2010-03-10). "Top free troubleshooting tools for Windows". [[BusinessWeek]].
2. (Summer 2007). "Disk Space Analyzer: WinDirStat". [[Future US]].
3. Immler, Christian. (2005). "Windows XP Professional". Franzis.
4. "Filesystems software sorted by popularity".
5. (1 February 2011). "Review: WinDirStat disk usage cleanup tool".
6. (2006-10-06). "WDS featured in c't". WinDirStat weblog.
7. Bass, Steve. "Editorial Review of Windirstat". [[PC World (magazine).
8. "WinDirStat 1.1.2: CNET editors' review". [[CNET]].
9. (2010-01-21). "Best Free Disk Analyzer". Gizmo's Freeware.
10. "Browse WinDirStat: Windows Directory Statistics". [[SourceForge]].
11. (2009-05-30). "Will resume development now". WinDirStat Blog.
12. (2019-01-12). "Download WinDirStat - FossHub". WinDirStat FossHub page.