Analyze Disk Usage and Mark Duplicate Files on Windows with ‘Spyglass’

All Windows users have to do in order to check the free space on their hard drives is to head on over to My Computer; the usage bar under each drive quickly shows the amount of used / free space and total storage capacity on that particular drive.

But what if you wanted to get detailed space specifications of a particular folder on your computer? One would probably access the particular folder’s properties. But the properties do not include information such as the space taken up files and the space taken up by subfolders.

Here to provide that information to Windows users in quite an interesting way is a visually appealing desktop app for Windows called ‘Spyglass.’

Spyglass is a desktop app that is compatible with computers which are running the Windows OS. The function of this application is to help you analyze the disk space taken up by files and folders in a specific folder on your computer. You can either drag a folder into the application or simply point to it from within the app, and a pie-chart-like view is generated and displayed to you.

You begin by downloading the app’s setup archive that is sized at nearly 5 MB. With the app installed, you can quickly have any folder analyzed simply by dragging and dropping it into the app’s window.

The left pane of the app will list the files and folders contained within the folder which you dragged whereas the right pane will display the abovementioned pie-chart-like view. The pie chart will have the size of the folder mentioned in its center. The blue region indicates the space taken up in the folder by its subfolders. The orange region indicates the same but for files instead of subfolders.

You can click on the blue region to open up that particular subfolder in the app.

A resultant view will open up for the subfolder, just like it did for the main folder.

What I found particularly useful about Spyglass was its feature of letting users mark files as they browsed them. This ability to mark or flag files lets users delete or move marked files. You can use this to effectively hunt for duplicate files in areas where you suspect them to be, mark them, and then easily delete them with a click of the mouse (from within the application).

Spyglass is a refreshingly new way to analyze disk usage within folders. And the app’s feature to help in deleting and moving files adds to its overall appeal.

You can get Spyglass from here.