dust(1)
dust is a user-friendly alternative to du that shows disk space usage in a visually intuitive way with ASCII trees and percentages.
Synopsis
dust [OPTION]... [PATH]...Description
dust recursively analyzes disk usage and displays results as an interactive tree, making it easy to identify large files and directories at a glance. Unlike du, dust uses a human-readable format by default and shows percentages to contextualize space consumption.
Results are sorted by size in descending order, and the output is colored for better readability. dust is particularly useful for finding disk hogs quickly without memorizing du flags.
Common options
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
-r, --depth NUM | Maximum depth to recurse; 1 shows only the target directory |
-d, --min-size SIZE | Only show files/dirs larger than SIZE (e.g., 50mb, 1gb) |
-x, --no-cross | Don't cross filesystem boundaries |
-z, --min-size-ratio SIZE | Filter directories by minimum percentage of total |
-i, --ignore-all-in-file FILE | Read patterns from file to exclude (like .gitignore) |
-A, --aggregation-depth NUM | Display depth where files/dirs are aggregated in output |
-s, --si | Use SI units (1000) instead of binary (1024) |
-n, --number-of-lines NUM | Show top NUM largest items only |
-c, --no-colors | Disable colored output |
-b, --no-bars | Hide percentage bars in output |
Examples
Show disk usage for current directory and subdirectories
dustAnalyze disk usage under /home directory
dust /homeShow only 2 levels deep in /var (immediate subdirectories)
dust -r 2 /varList only items larger than 100mb in /home/user
dust -d 100mb /home/userAnalyze from root without crossing into other filesystems (skip /mnt, /proc, etc.)
dust -x /Show only the top 5 largest items in /opt
dust -n 5 /optDisplay sizes in SI units (MB, GB) instead of binary (MiB, GiB)
dust -s /homeAnalyze /project while respecting exclusions in .gitignore
dust -i .gitignore /project