DUA(1)

✨ DUA 💖 — the manual, but make it a group chat

okay so bestie, welcome to the dua(1) page 💅 this is the User Commands section of the manual, which basically means: it's a command, you run it in a terminal, and it's about to become your whole personality. grab a snack 🍓

🌸 NAME 🌸

dua — a tool to learn about disk usage, fast! ⚡ no cap, it literally says fast, with an exclamation mark and everything.

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

dua [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [SUBCOMMAND] [INPUT]...

like. that's the whole shape of it. flags, options, a subcommand if you're feeling fancy, and then some inputs. periodt.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

dua is a fast disk usage analyzer that lets you explore and manage disk space — either interactively (hi, TUI) or straight from the command line. it does parallel directory traversal for high performance on large filesystems, which is the technical way of saying it eats big directories for breakfast and doesn't even break a sweat 🔥

if you give it no input at all? no worries. it just uses all the entries in the current working directory. main character default behaviour, honestly. 👑

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🎀 SUBCOMMANDS 🎀

• interactive, i — launch the terminal user interface (TUI) for interactive navigation and management of disk usage. this is the ✨experience✨ mode.
• aggregate, a — aggregate the consumed space of one or more directories or files and print the result to standard output. the "just tell me the number" mode.
• completions — generate shell completions for the specified shell. so your tab key can be smart too 🫶
• config — configuration related commands. like, commands that relate to config. iykyk.
• help — print the help message, or the help of the given subcommand. the ✨emotional support✨ subcommand.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -t, --threads _THREADS_ — how many threads to use. defaults to 0, which means "use the amount of logical processors" (let the machine cook 💀). set it to 1 to use only a single thread. (env: DUA_THREADS, default: 0)
• -f, --format _FORMAT_ — the format with which to print byte counts. possible values: metric, binary, bytes, gb, gib, mb, mib. (env: DUA_FORMAT, default: binary)
• -A, --apparent-size — display apparent size instead of disk usage. (env: DUA_APPARENT_SIZE)
• -l, --count-hard-links — count hard-linked files each time they are seen. (env: DUA_COUNT_HARD_LINKS)
• -x, --stay-on-filesystem — do not cross filesystems or traverse mount points. stay in your lane, bestie 🚧 (env: DUA_STAY_ON_FILESYSTEM)
• -i, --ignore-dirs _IGNORE_DIRS_ — one or more absolute directories to ignore during traversal. important caveat: these are not ignored if you pass them directly as input paths. (env: DUA_IGNORE_DIRS, default: /proc /dev /sys /run)
• --log-file _LOG_FILE_ — write a log file with debug information, including panics. yes, panics 😭 it logs those too. (env: DUA_LOG_FILE)
• -h, --help — print help.
• -V, --version — print version.

fun lil' remix moment: i shows up twice up there — once as the interactive subcommand and once as the short form of --ignore-dirs. not a typo, that's just how it is, we deal 💀

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🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

analyze disk usage of the current directory:

dua

launch the interactive TUI navigator:

dua i

analyze a specific directory:

dua i /home

aggregate disk usage of multiple directories:

dua a /var /tmp /home

use metric format and 4 threads:

dua --format metric --threads 4 /home

display apparent size instead of disk usage:

dua -A /home

ignore specific directories during traversal:

dua --ignore-dirs /proc /dev i

generate bash shell completions:

dua completions bash

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🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

• DUA_THREADS — number of threads to use.
• DUA_FORMAT — output byte format (metric, binary, bytes, gb, gib, mb, mib).
• DUA_APPARENT_SIZE — if set, display apparent size instead of disk usage.
• DUA_COUNT_HARD_LINKS — if set, count hard-linked files each time they are seen.
• DUA_STAY_ON_FILESYSTEM — if set, do not cross filesystem boundaries.
• DUA_IGNORE_DIRS — colon-separated list of absolute directories to ignore.
• DUA_LOG_FILE — path to the log file for debug information.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

du(1), ncdu(1), df(1) — the whole friend group, go say hi 🫶

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

written by Byron. manual organized and compiled by the Debian maintainers:

• Josenilson Ferreira da Silva <nilsonfsilva@hotmail.com>
• Luiz Georg <luizgngeorg@gmail.com>

also also! little raindrop of context for the very end: this page belongs to dua-cli 2.34.0, dated 2026-05-17, and lives in section 1 (DUA(1)) of the manual. slay, that's the whole page, you read it, iconic behaviour, go check your disk usage bestie 💖✨