what to look for in a disk analyzer
three things actually matter for day-to-day use: scan speed, how clearly the visualisation surfaces large files, and whether you trust it near your files. a slow scan is annoying enough that you stop opening the app. a visualisation that doesn't clearly rank items by size — a flat sorted list, for example — makes it hard to spot the real culprits at a glance. and a tool that can delete files is more powerful but requires more trust.
the 'discovery not deletion' approach grove takes is deliberately conservative: scan fast, show a treemap, open the file in finder. the deletion step stays in your hands and in an app you already trust. daisy disk takes the opposite position — it lets you select files in its sunburst view and delete them from within the app, which is convenient but requires trusting a third-party tool with your files.
which tool fits which situation
for a quick, free investigation whenever the storage warning appears, grove is the natural starting point. the treemap answers 'what is actually taking up space' in under a minute. grandperspective answers the same question with a similar squarified treemap but scans noticeably slower; it's free and long-established, making it a reasonable second opinion.
daisy disk is worth the $9.99 if you want a polished app you'll keep and use regularly, particularly if you like managing the cleanup from within the tool rather than switching to finder. omnidisksweeper's sorted list is useful when you want a plain text-style breakdown rather than a visual map — it's free and lightweight but lacks the immediate visual clarity of a treemap.
grove vs daisy disk vs grandperspective vs omnidisksweeper
| tool | price | scan speed | interface | built-in deletion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| grove | free | fast (native rust scan) | squarified treemap, click to drill in | no — reveal in finder |
| daisy disk | $9.99 | fast | sunburst chart | yes |
| grandperspective | free | medium | squarified treemap | no |
| omnidisksweeper | free | slow | sorted list | yes (with confirmation) |
frequently asked
is daisy disk worth $9.99 over a free alternative?
if you want a polished app you'll use regularly and prefer managing deletions from within the tool, yes. daisy disk's sunburst chart is distinctive and the ux is well-considered. if you mainly want to identify large files and then handle deletion yourself in finder, grove or grandperspective do that job for free.
what's the difference between a sunburst chart and a squarified treemap?
both show disk usage as proportional area. a sunburst uses concentric rings, with the innermost ring as the root and each outer ring as a deeper level of the directory tree. a squarified treemap uses nested rectangles. treemaps tend to use screen space more efficiently and make area comparisons easier at a glance; sunbursts are better at showing hierarchy depth. grove and grandperspective use treemaps; daisy disk uses a sunburst.
does grove need any special permissions?
grove needs full disk access to scan protected directories (like ~/library and /system). macos will prompt you the first time; you can grant it in system settings → privacy & security → full disk access. grove only reads file sizes — it never reads file contents.
can grandperspective scan as fast as grove?
grandperspective scans more slowly than grove in practice. grove uses a rust-based native scan that parallelises directory walks; grandperspective uses the older approach of calling stat() on each file sequentially. for large disks (512 gb+) the difference can be 2–5× in scan time.
Last updated June 22, 2026