Views and colors

Map, sunburst and list, what the colors mean, and how File Types counts.

Three views

Every location shows as a map, a sunburst or a list; the toolbar switches between them. The map draws each item as a cell in proportion to its size and folds cells too small to read into one labelled group. The sunburst shows the current level as the inner ring and what is inside each folder as the outer ring; a grey sector gathers the smaller items and opens the list. Double-click drills into a folder in either view; the breadcrumb or the center of the ring goes back up.

What the colors mean

By Folder gives the largest items at each level distinct muted hues by rank, so the map reads as shape. By Type colors every item by its kind with the same colors used for dots and bars throughout the app. By Age shades items from vivid for recent to grey for old, in five steps from under six months to over five years. The choice sits in the bar above the map and a legend appears for type and age.

File kinds

Kinds are decided by extension and by package type: Documents, Media, Archives and Installers, Developer, Applications, System and Library, and Other for anything else. My Mac and File Types total every file in the scanned locations by kind, counting nested locations once. Scans saved before totals existed contribute nothing until rescanned, and the screen says which.

Why My Mac and Finder disagree

My Mac uses sizes on disk for the volume picture and logical sizes for the file type bar, and says so under each. If the scanned folders add up to more than the disk shows as used, the excess is reported rather than hidden; cloned and sparse files are the usual cause, and a rescan refreshes stale figures.

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