Disk Map - User Guide

Disk Map makes it very easy to visualize the files and folders that are cluttering up your storage drives. It enables you to quickly locate, delete or compress large files and folders on your hard drive and reclaim valuable space. Here’s a quick step by step guide on how to use the app to the best of its abilities:

Launching the App and Selecting Folder to Scan:

When the app launches, you are presented with a first-launch dialog box as follows:

Click on the ‘Select a folder’ button to be presented with a Finder window to choose any folder in order to run a full system scan. Click on the folder of your choice and hit ‘Choose’. Upon doing so, hit the ‘Next’ button on the bottom right corner of your screen. You can also hit the ‘Clear Selection’ button to reselect a folder to scan.

Performing a Folder Scan:
 

Upon clicking ‘Next’, Disk Map proceeds to perform a scan of the files within the selected folder in order to eventually provide a detailed treemap visual display of further files and folders within the scanned folder. When a scan has completed, the following screen appears on your screen. Hit ‘Next’ to proceed to the treemap display:

Please note that the scanning process can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes depending on the size of the folder being scanned and the nature of your drive (Solid State Drives scan faster than a normal Hard Drive).

Viewing and Clearing Data:

Once scanned, you will be presented with a treemap visual display as follows, representing all the files and folders within your selected, scanned folder:

You now have the option to individually view, compress or delete the files and folders that you see are taking up space on your Mac. The differing sizes of the squares/rectangles corresponds to the overall contributive size of each file/folder that is part of the scanned volume. You can right click on an individual file/folder and be presented with a small dialog box to compress/delete that particular item, or further to view it in Finder or even add it to Disk Map’s ignore list so that it is not displayed in any scan in the future. 

You can click and select on the content in order to take the necessary action you wish to perform. However, in case you choose to delete a file or directory using the app, we always recommend that you make a Time Machine back up (ideally on an external hard drive) before progressing forward with clearing the space-hogging and unneeded contents on your Mac. Here’s how: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Once you have performed the necessary actions that you wish to, you can click ‘Finish’ on the bottom right corner and this will complete your Disk Map operation for this session. You will be presented with a screen showing how much space was freed up, if indeed you chose to delete contents from the scanned volume that you selected in this instance.

You can then choose to rescan or Quit the app. 

Preferences:

When the app is running, you can access the Preferences menu for the app from the top left corner of your Mac’s menubar, where it says Disk Map. You can alternatively also hit Cmd + , (command and comma) when the app is running. 
 

Under the General tab, you will be presented with the ability to tick or untick options that allow you to customize the way in which files are deleted, whether immediately or otherwise. You can also choose to have the app show you hidden/system files and folders. Lastly, you can select a minimum file size to scan for as well as select which file extensions and which folders to ignore.

Clicking on the Color Theme tab allows you to toggle between several different visually appealing color themes to have your treemap display presented in. You can also base colors on ‘file size’ and ‘depth’. These alter the appearance of the treemap display in terms of its colours.