Disk Inventory X is a free, open-source Mac application that visualises your storage as a colour-coded treemap, making it immediately obvious which files and folders are consuming the most space on any mounted volume.
What is Disk Inventory X?
Disk Inventory X is a graphical disk-space analyser for macOS that scans a volume and renders every file as a proportionally-sized rectangle inside a zoomable treemap. At a glance you can see that your home directory is dominated by a forgotten 40 GB virtual machine image, or that a single Final Cut cache folder is quietly eating your SSD alive. It draws on the same treemap concept as WinDirStat on Windows, but brings a native Mac interface to the task.
The tool has been around for a very long time — longer than most competing apps — and while it is not under active weekly development, it remains fully functional and is available free of charge directly from the developer's site or via Homebrew Cask.
What does Disk Inventory X do best?
The treemap is its superpower. Where a folder-tree view forces you to drill down one directory at a time, the treemap surfaces deep-nested space hogs in a single screen without a single click. I once found a 12 GB crashreporter archive buried six levels down in a system Library subfolder — something I would never have stumbled upon with Finder or a plain list tool.
- Colour-coded kinds: file types are colour-coded by kind, so video, disk images, and archives pop visually.
- Drill-in interaction: clicking a rectangle in the treemap jumps the folder tree to that exact file — then one more click reveals it in Finder.
- Full-volume scans: scan your startup disk, an external drive, a mounted network share, or a Time Machine volume equally well.
- Zero installation overhead: the application is lightweight and leaves no background processes running after you quit.
Is Disk Inventory X free?
Yes — Disk Inventory X is completely free to download and use, with no subscription, no in-app purchase, and no nag screen. The developer has distributed it under an open licence for years. If you appreciate it, a PayPal tip on the developer's site is the only form of support requested.
Who should use Disk Inventory X?
Anyone who has ever opened Finder's Get Info panel and been mystified by where their disk space actually went. It is especially valuable for power users who maintain large media libraries, developers juggling Docker images and Xcode simulators, and anyone managing older Macs where storage is scarce. If you have already run the obvious cleanup steps — emptied the trash, cleared Downloads — and your disk still looks worryingly full, Disk Inventory X is the next tool you reach for.
It is less suited to users who want automated cleanup, scheduling, or built-in deletion wizards. Disk Inventory X shows you the problem; it does not solve it for you. That is a deliberate philosophy, and I appreciate it — I want to decide what gets deleted, not have an app do it for me.
How does Disk Inventory X compare to DaisyDisk?
DaisyDisk is the main commercial competitor, and it is genuinely beautiful — a sunburst chart with silky animations and a drag-to-delete collector that makes cleanup feel pleasant. If aesthetics and one-click removal workflows matter to you, DaisyDisk is worth its price. OmniDiskSweeper takes a simpler ranked-list approach that is fast and no-frills. GrandPerspective is another free treemap tool that is actively maintained and supports modern macOS more reliably.
Disk Inventory X sits between GrandPerspective and DaisyDisk: richer information density than OmniDiskSweeper, no cost unlike DaisyDisk, and a more detailed kind-colouring system than GrandPerspective. On macOS Sequoia and Apple Silicon, GrandPerspective may be the safer long-term bet if you encounter compatibility hiccups — but Disk Inventory X remains widely usable and is still the tool many veterans reach for first out of sheer familiarity.
What are the best Disk Inventory X alternatives?
The short list for Mac users in 2024–2025:
- GrandPerspective — free, actively maintained, treemap-based, great Apple Silicon support.
- DaisyDisk — paid, stunning UI, built-in deletion workflow, the best overall experience if you will pay for it.
- OmniDiskSweeper — free from the Omni Group, plain ranked-folder list, extremely fast scan.
- Finder > Get Info / Storage panel — Apple's own built-in recommendation engine (System Settings → General → Storage) is fine for casual cleanups but shows no deep breakdown.
