Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer are missing! How to show Folder Sizes in Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7 easily.  Show all folder sizes and find the largest folders and files.

Why Folder Sizes are Missing in Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7

Recently I came across some posts on forums from people complaining that there is no Folder Size column in Windows. While this is true there is a pretty good reason for it.

First of all none of the file systems support such an option by design. In other words, it is not available to the operating system. Why is that? Imagine for a moment how this should work at all and the reasons will be quite clear. If folder size information was available it means that on every file operation, the system must update this information. Certainly, this may not be a heavy operation if you save or delete a few files. But what about if you copy or move millions of files? Such an operation will take ages.

In addition to that, you have at least 500 files open in your operating system at any given time. You will argue that it is not true but don’t forget the ones used by the operating system itself. As you can understand, all those have to be constantly tracked.

Such tracking will lead to immense system slow-down.  Clearly, if it was really implemented the people from those forums that complain about the folder size column not being implemented would be complaining that it is present. 😉

What do you personally prefer – a constantly slow system because of a feature that you use rarely or just to look for an alternative to scan your folder sizes under Widows 7?

Folder Size is not available not only in Windows 7 but also in Windows 8, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows NT, Linux, Mac OS, or any other operating system because of the performance issues mentioned above.

I hope I have managed to explain this clearly enough.

How to Show Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

I personally like the things they are and I use this FREE Folder Size application whenever I need it. It is very lightweight and fast and has a beautiful interface resembling the one of Windows Explorer with plenty of charts. This is my personal favorite in the disk cleanup process.

Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

Watch this video tutorial:

Folder Sizes Add-on for Explorer

There are some add-ons for showing folder sizes. The most popular one is also named Folder Szie like the above tool. However, that creates awful confusion for the users. Clearly, it works in a completely different way. That is why, it used to work until Windows XP. Good thing is that Microsoft prevented such add-ons from running in Windows 7 and newer. Nevertheless, the author changed the plugin to work in an even worse way. Now it pops up a window next to every Explorer window.

Why Explorer Add-ons are Bad and Banned by Microsoft

The main reason for that is add-ons like the above one. That add-on does exactly what I described and that should not be done. It installs a service on your system. That service monitors all file operations and updates its database with folder sizes. Basically, it executes on every read/write operation on your system.

As a result, it slows down your entire system even if you are not viewing the folder sizes. That is why, Microsoft completely removed the Windows Explorer shell extensions. Of course, not because of that particular add-on but because of all similar add-ons.

While add-ons can be great if developed properly there were many similar poor ones. That is why, I personally think that Microsoft did well. Probably they got tons of support emails that Windows Explorer is not working. Definitely, most of those were not Microsoft’s fault and were caused by bad add-ons.

In addition to that, even if the shell extensions are developed properly they might cause issues. If you have many add-ons they can still cause huge slow-downs. Certainly, not only in Windows Explorer but on your entire system. Because Windows Explorer is a core application that is part of your desktop.

Just download Folder Size and you will not run into such problems. It is FREE and lightweight and does not use any resources while it is not running.

 

 

1 thought on “Folder Sizes in Windows Explorer

  1. Pingback: Find Largest Files in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

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