SpaceSniffer by Uderzo Software

Let’s imagine for a moment that your hard drive is nearly full, or that you just want to clean out some of the junk you have stored on it. If you’re actually trying to free up space, the best way to approach it is to find the largest files and work backward.

SpaceSniffer is a free Windows application that analyzes all the content stored on a hard drive and shows you through a visual representation which files are taking up the most room.

What is SpaceSniffer for?

SpaceSniffer is essentially a file browser with a unique twist. It shows the content stored on your hard drive in order of the size it’s taking up, from largest to smallest. It’s structured so that you can select each element in a window to get more detail.

It displays elements in a tree view, with boxes to represent the size of the content. At first, you are presented with all the major directories on your hard drive and how much space they have consumed. When you click on a single directory, it opens in the window and you can further see how that directory is broken down.

It works similar to Windows File Explorer, but it’s much better at differentiating between larger and smaller data chunks.

If you want to get rid of files on your hard drive and you need to know how much space each directory, folder, or file is taking up then SpaceSniffer is the way to go.

Why Would You Want it?

Aside from the fact that it’s free, and portable, SpaceSniffer is a much more detailed file organizer than Windows File Explorer.

You can specify specific media or files types to look for – such as all JPG files – through a filter system. You can also do the opposite and exclude certain file types from a scan.

Furthermore, SpaceSniffer makes it remarkably easy to discern what files and directories you’ve already looked at. You can tag elements in the window one of four colors, that lets you know you’ve already checked out that directory or you’re considering removing it. Later, you can tell the filter to only show content that’s been tagged a certain color.

You can even filter files by their age, allowing you to delete the oldest files on your computer first.

Why would you want to do any of this, you ask? To help you better organize your content and remove the junk, plain and simple. This is an excellent tool if you’ve nearly filled up your hard drive, and you need to free up some space. It’s also a great tool to help you get a little spring cleaning done. We all know how much junk seems to pile up on your desktop.

If you’d like an explanation of all SpaceSniffer’s features in more depth, you can head on over to the official developer’s site.

Anything I Should Be Aware of?

SpaceSniffer is available in a portable package, which means that you don’t need to install the application to use it. Instead, you can run it right from the download directory. This also means that you can store the application anywhere, including a removable USB drive, for portable use.