How To Find The Largest Files On Windows 11/10

If your PC is running is out of disk space and you want to clear some of the files. Then the quickest way to free up storage is to find the largest files. So you can easily decide if they are useful or not and get rid of them instantly. So the question is, how to find the largest files on Windows 11/10?

Luckily Windows offers you multiple ways to find the large files stored in your drivers. For instance, Windows offers you built-in tools for the job. Or you can download third-party apps.

However, in this article, I will be explaining the easy-to-use and quickest methods one by one.

How To Find The Largest Files On Windows 11/10

There are multiple ways to find the largest file on your Windows 11/10 System. For instance, you can use File Explorer, use the command prompt or download third-party software. Anyway, in this article, I will be looking at the following methods:

1. File Explorer
2. Command Prompt
3. Largest Files Finder
4. TreeSize Free

These methods include free software and built-in method.

1]  File Explorer

Not many know, but File Explorer comes with lots of hidden features that allow you to organize, sort, and manage your files better.

Even, it also lets you find files based on the specific size on your computer. However, before you start looking for the largest file, you have to enable the Show hidden files and folders option. So you can ensure that Windows 10 is not leaving any files behind.

• To enable it, go to File Explorer > View tab > Options and click on the View tab. In Windows 11, Click on the three-dot menu, and click on Options to open the Folder Options window.
• Finally, select the Show hidden files, folders, and drives option and click on Apply and OK.

Once done, do follow these below steps to find the largest files on Windows 10 using File Explorer:

• Open File Explorer using Win + E, and then click on This PC.
• Click on the search box from the top right corner.
• Now a new Search menu item will be visible at the top of your screen. In case if you don’t see the option, do try searching for something. Use *.* to search everything.
• Next, select the Size option and then select the file size limit from the list.
• In Windows 11, you need to click on Search Options > Size and then choose Huge or Gigantic from the list.
• After that, Windows will look for files based on the size limit you have selected. If Windows fails to find files, then do lower down the search limit.

Once the search results appear, right-click on any blank space on your screen. Then select Sort By > Size > Descending. And this will bring up the largest files at the top.

2] Use Command Prompt 

Command Prompt can also be used for finding the largest files on your system. The command prompt method helps you retrieve a list of all the files larger than a specified size value. Then you can export the text file and find the files.

For this, follow these below steps:

• At first, press click on the search button next to the Windows icon.
• Type CMD and then right-click on it and select Run as administrator to open the command prompt.  
• Once you are on CMD, you will need to run the below command. In this command, the 1073741824 refers to the 1GB value. However, you can always change the value by using Gigabytes to byte calculator.

forfiles /S /M * /C “cmd /c if @fsize GEQ 1073741824 echo @path > largefiles.txt

Once the scan is completed, open the largefiles.txt, and it will have the list of all the large files. Then navigate to the location and decide whether you should be keeping the file or not. However, this one is a time-consuming job.

3] Largest Files Finder

Apart from Windows built-in tools, you can try downloading Largest Files Finder. This one is a freeware application that helps you find the 100 largest files on your hard disk or within multiple subdirectories.

The software automatically scans your hard drive and displays the top 100 largest files on your computer. Also, it shows you the file name, full folder path, file size, and date of the last change.

To get started with this, follow these steps:

• At first, download Largest Files Finder from its official website.
• Once downloaded, double-click on it, and it will instantly start scanning your computer.
• So wait for the scan to get finished. Or you can click on the stop button from the right top corner and then select a folder to start the scan.
• Once the scan is completed, you will find a list of the largest files. Now click on each file and right-click to visit the file location or delete it.

4] TreeSize Free

TreeSize Free is another directory scanning app to find available storage. This one comes with lots of features. For instance, you can use this tool to visualize disk space usage, scan network shares, and cloud drives, and so on. Also, it is extremely fast as it uses Master File Table or MFT to scan local NTFS drives.

To use it, follow these steps:

• First of all, download TreeSize Free.
• Then double-click on the setup file and install it by following all the on-screen instructions.
• Next, use the Select Directory to select a location to scan files.
• Finally, it will display a tree of your folders along with the space they occupy on your computer. You can also double-click on these folders to view their subfolders and their sizes.

So those were a few methods to find the largest files on Windows 10 and Windows 11. If you ask me, I would recommend you to try out the Largest Files Finder app. It is the easiest tool that you can use, and it brings you results at the quickest.

Anyway, go ahead and try these methods out and see how they are working for you. Also, for any other questions about finding large files in Windows 11/10