4 Ways To Find Large Files In Windows 10

Free up space quickly by deleting them

If you quickly want to free up memory space on your Windows machine, the best way to do that is to find large files on your Windows 10 PC and get rid of them if they’re no longer useful. The question though is how do you go about searching for large files on your computer?

Windows provides you with multiple ways to find all the large files that are stored in your drives. Either you can use the built-in tools on your machine to look for these files or you can grab a third-party app that will do the task for you. Either way, you’ll find the files that occupy a significant portion of your memory space.

Once such files are found, it’s then up to you what you want to do with them. If deleting them permanently isn’t something you’d like to do straight away, you can move them over to cloud storage or to an external hard drive.

Also, be sure to check out our YouTube videofrom our sister site Online Tech Tips where we go through some of the options mentioned below in this article.

Find Large Files In Windows 10 Using File Explorer

File Explorer comes with a lot of hidden features to let you organize, sort, and find files on your computer. One of its abilities is to help you find files that are of a specific size on your computer. Using this feature, you can locate those memory-hogging files and get them removed from your PC.

Before you do that, though, you’ll need to first enable the hidden files option. This is to ensure that Explorer looks for large hidden files in addition to searching for the normal files.

However, be cautious when dealing with hidden files. Most of the time, these are system and app-related files which, if you delete, will cause your apps to malfunction and even lead your entire system to crash. Before you delete anything, just make sure you know what it is and you’ll be fine.

Open theStart Menuand search forShow hiddenand click onShow hidden files and folders.

When the dialog box opens, click on theViewtab at the top. You’ll see various File Explorer options that you can modify.

Find the option that saysShow hidden files, folders, and drivesand put a checkmark in it. Then click on theOKbutton to save your changes.

Double-click onThis PCon your desktop to launch File Explorer. When the utility launches, click on the search box given at the top-right corner.

A new menu item will be added to the top of your screen. Click on the newly added item that saysSearchto view further options.

Select theSizeoption and then select an appropriate option from the list. It’ll let you find large files available on your PC.

If what you consider as a large file isn’t available in the default menu, type insize:>1GB(replace 1GB with your size) in the search box and hitEnter. It’ll only look for files that are larger than your specified size.

When the search results appear, right-click anywhere blank and selectSort byfollowed bySizeandDescending. This’ll ensure the largest file is shown at the top of the results.

Search For Large Files In Windows 10 With Command Prompt

If you’re more of a geeky person, you can use the Command Prompt utility to retrieve a list of all the files larger than a specified size value. The files list can be exported to a text file for you to then actually find those files on your machine.

PressWindows + R, type incmd, and hitEnterto launch the utility.

When it launches, type in the following command and hitEnter. It’ll find all the files that are larger than 1GB in size. You can modify the value in the command so it finds files that you think are large.forfiles /S /M * /C “cmd /c if @fsize GEQ 1073741824 echo @path > largefiles.txt

Open the newly createdlargefiles.txtfile and it’ll have a list of all the large files sitting on your computer.

Use Largest Files Finder To Find Large Files On Windows 10

File Explorer and Command Prompt aren’t the only tools to find large files on your Windows 10 computer. There are a few third-party apps as well that can help you find such files.

Largest Files Finderis one of those apps that help you find the top 100 largest files on your computer. It claims to be only taking a minute to scan drives sized up to 200GB. Also, it doesn’t require any installation and works straight out of the box.

If you want to delete any files from the search results, you can do so with ease from within the app. Simply right-click on any of the files and selectDelete.

Find Largest Files On Windows 10 With TreeSize Free

TreeSize Freehas been around for quite a long time and it helps you find space hogging files on your Windows computers. It requires a small installation but then it works like a charm.

You can then sort the directories by theSizecolumn so that the largest files are always shown at the top.

It has a few customizable options as well should you want to use them. Feel free to play around with any options you think will make it easier to find large files on your computer.

Mahesh has been obsessed with technology since he got his first gadget a decade or so ago. Over the last few years, he’s written a number of tech articles on various online publications including but not limited to MakeTechEasier and Android AppStorm.Read Mahesh’s Full Bio

Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked*

Comment*

Name*

Email*

Website

Welcome to Help Desk Geek- a blog full of tech tips from trusted tech experts. We have thousands of articles and guides to help you troubleshoot any issue. Our articles have been read over 150 million times since we launched in 2008.

HomeAbout UsEditorial StandardsContact UsTerms of Use

4 Ways To Find Large Files In Windows 10#

Find Large Files In Windows 10 Using File Explorer#

Search For Large Files In Windows 10 With Command Prompt#

Use Largest Files Finder To Find Large Files On Windows 10#

Find Largest Files On Windows 10 With TreeSize Free#