gdu(1)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so this is gdu(1) — the General Commands Manual page for it — and it's literally a pretty fast disk usage analyzer written in Go 💖 that's the whole vibe, that's the name, periodt.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

gdu [flags] [directory_to_scan...]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Pretty fast disk usage analyzer written in Go. no cap, that's the pitch 🔥

So here's the tea: gdu is built primarily for SSD disks, where it can fully utilize parallel processing — like, it eats on an SSD fr fr 👑. HDDs work as well, bestie, but the performance gain is not so huge. lowkey expected but we move 💅

You can hand it more than one directory. They are scanned one after another and presented together under a virtual top level directory named (multiple), listed by their absolute path. Cute, right? 🌸 But here's the warning: nested directories are rejected, because scanning both would count the nested part twice 😭 double-counting is not the move.

Also important: exporting (--output-file) and database storage (--db) accept a single directory only. just one. don't push it 🫶

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h, --help[=false] — help for gdu. you're welcome 💖
• -i, --ignore-dirs=[/proc,/dev,/sys,/run] — Paths to ignore (separated by comma). Supports both absolute and relative paths.
• -I, --ignore-dirs-pattern — Path patterns to ignore (separated by comma). Supports both absolute and relative path patterns.
• -X, --ignore-from — Read path patterns to ignore from file. Supports both absolute and relative path patterns.
• -G, --ignore-from-gitignore — Read directories to ignore from file with .gitignore-style patterns. A name without / matches at any depth, a trailing / marks a directory, a leading / anchors the pattern to the directory being scanned. Blank lines and comments are skipped. Negated patterns (starting with !) and patterns matching every directory (such as * or **) are rejected with an error, as both would make gdu report less than is really on disk. -I, -X and -G combine: a directory is ignored if it matches any of them. Paths from -i apply in addition.
• -T, --type — File types to include (e.g., –type yaml,json)
• -E, --exclude-type — File types to exclude (e.g., –exclude-type yaml,json)
• --max-age — Include files with mtime no older than DURATION (e.g., 7d, 2h30m, 1y2mo)
• --min-age — Include files with mtime at least DURATION old (e.g., 30d, 1w)
• --since — Include files with mtime >= WHEN. WHEN accepts RFC3339 timestamp (e.g., 2025-08-11T01:00:00-07:00) or date only YYYY-MM-DD (calendar-day compare; includes the whole day) 🗓️
• --until — Include files with mtime <= WHEN. WHEN accepts RFC3339 timestamp or date only YYYY-MM-DD
• -l, --log-file="/dev/null" — Path to a logfile
• -m, --max-cores — Set max cores that Gdu will use.
• --sequential[=false] — Use sequential scanning (intended for rotating HDDs)
• -c, --no-color[=false] — Do not use colorized output
• -x, --no-cross[=false] — Do not cross filesystem boundaries
• -H, --no-hidden[=false] — Ignore hidden directories (beginning with dot)
• -L, --follow-symlinks[=false] — Follow symlinks for files, i.e. show the size of the file to which symlink points to (symlinks to directories are not followed) 🔗
• -A, --show-annexed-size[=false] — Use apparent size of git-annex'ed files in case files are not present locally (real usage is zero)
• -n, --non-interactive[=false] — Do not run in interactive mode
• --interactive[=false] — Force interactive mode even when output is not a TTY
• -p, --no-progress[=false] — Do not show progress in non-interactive mode
• -u, --no-unicode[=false] — Do not use Unicode symbols (for size bar)
• -s, --summarize[=false] — Show only a total in non-interactive mode
• -t, --top[=0] — Show only top X largest files in non-interactive mode
• --reverse-sort[=false] — Reverse sorting order (smallest to largest) in non-interactive mode
• -d, --show-disks[=false] — Show all mounted disks
• -a, --show-apparent-size[=false] — Show apparent size
• -B, --show-relative-size[=false] — Show the size bar relative to the largest sibling instead of the parent directory
• -C, --show-item-count[=false] — Show number of items in directory
• -k, --show-in-kib[=false] — Show sizes in KiB (or kB with –si) in non-interactive mode
• -M, --show-mtime[=false] — Show latest mtime of items in directory
• --show-symlink-target[=false] — Show symlink target (name -> target) in the file list
• --archive-browsing[=false] — Enable browsing of zip/jar/tar archives (tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz) 🗜️
• --depth[=0] — Show directory structure up to specified depth in non-interactive mode (0 means the flag is ignored); also limits entries inside browsed archives
• --collapse-path[=false] — Collapse single-child directory chains
• --mouse[=false] — Use mouse 🐭
• --si[=false] — Show sizes with decimal SI prefixes (kB, MB, GB) instead of binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB)
• --no-prefix[=false] — Show sizes as raw numbers without any prefixes (SI or binary) in non-interactive mode
• --no-spawn-shell[=false] — Do not allow spawning shell
• --no-confirm-quit[=false] — Do not ask for confirmation before quitting after a long scan
• --ctrl-c-quits[=false] — Quit gdu when Ctrl+C is pressed during a scan instead of stopping the scan and keeping results. Esc always stops the scan and keeps the results found so far, regardless of this flag. 💀
• --no-delete[=false] — Do not allow deletions. Applies to the web UI as well: the delete action is hidden and the server rejects delete requests.
  • Reveal remains available in the web UI because it does not modify scanned data. Deletion while a filter is active is disabled by default: the terminal UI applies this to time filters, the web UI to any active filter, file-type filters included. Set GDU_ALLOW_DELETE_WITH_FILTER=1 to override the check; the displayed tree may then omit files that are still present on disk. ⚠️ like, fr, be careful
• --no-view-file[=false] — Do not allow viewing file contents
• --trash-command="" — Command used to move items to trash instead of the built-in trash. Used by the terminal UI's D key and the web UI's "Move to Trash" action. The command is evaluated by /bin/sh with the absolute path of the item appended as an argument, which is also exported as GDU_TRASH_PATH. Commands taking their destination last can refer to the path as "$1" instead, in which case it is not appended. The command must not be interactive. Not supported on Windows. For example: trash-put --trash-dir ~/mytrash or mv -f "$1" ~/mytrash/ 🗑️
• --web[=false] — Run the web UI (serves a browser interface instead of the terminal UI). Gdu scans the given directory, prints the URL and serves a read-only browser interface for it. 🌐
• --web-listen="" — Address for the web UI to listen on. By default the server binds to localhost on a random free port. Binding to a non-loopback address makes scan details reachable by other hosts on the network.
• --web-open[=true] — Open the web UI in the default browser on start. Use --web-open=false to only print the URL.
• -f, --input-file — Import analysis from JSON file. If the file is -, read from standard input.
• -o, --output-file — Export all info into file as JSON. If the file is -, write to standard output.
• --output-attrs — Export only selected JSON attributes (name,asize,dsize,items,mtime,notreg,ino). Requires --output-file. The name attribute is always included and directories always carry their asize, dsize and items summary stats so they can be preserved on import.
• --config-file="$HOME/.gdu.yaml" — Read config from file
• --write-config[=false] — Write current configuration to file (default is $HOME/.gdu.yaml)
• --enable-profiling[=false] — Enable collection of profiling data and provide it on http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/
• -D, --db — Store analysis in database (.sqlite for SQLite, .badger for BadgerDB)
• -r, --read-from-storage[=false] — Use existing database instead of re-scanning
• -v, --version[=false] — Print version

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🔍 FILE FLAGS 🔍

Files and directories may be prefixed by a one-character flag, and here's what each one means bestie, memorize these iykyk:

• ! — An error occurred while reading this directory.
• . — An error occurred while reading a subdirectory, size may be not correct. 😭
• @ — File is symlink or socket. Symlinks can be shown as name -> target (the link target is displayed next to the name, like ls -l).
• H — Same file was already counted (hard link).
• e — Directory is empty.

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okay that's the whole page bestie, go analyze some disks 💖🦋✨ no cap, this was gdu(1) from the General Commands Manual, dated 2026-10-05 — slay, bye 👑🎀