Home Linux Commands How to Find the Total Size of a Directory in Linux

How to Find the Total Size of a Directory in Linux

For Linux users and administrators in a server-like environment, knowing the exact size of a directory tree through the system terminal is important. It will help you compare file directory properties and determine their storage allocation when you want to copy or move these directories to a different location.

du Command Examples

The command du is an abbreviation for disk usage. This command is case-sensitive. Be specific in the use of uppercase and lowercase naming conventions while referencing directory names.

Let us look at the various ways of implementing the du command to list directory sizes in Linux.

1. Listing Current Directory Size

Navigate to the directory you are interested in and key in the “du” command.

$ du
Find Directory Size in Linux
Find Directory Size in Linux

The default usage of the “du” command without other command arguments or options inside a targeted directory can be broken down into two parts.

  1. It lists the sizes of the sub-directories inside the main directory. From the above example screenshot, “LinuxShellTips” is the main directory while “screenshots” and “August” are its sub-directories. The size of each sub-directory is listed in kilobytes (kb).
  2. It lists the size of the main directory housing other sub-directories as the last command line output entry. From the above example case, the main directory “LinuxShellTips” has a total size of 12576 kb.

2. Listing Specific Directory Sizes

If you are inside one director and you want to know the size of a particular sub-directory, implement your du command in the following manner:

$ du screenshots/
Find Particular Directory Size in Linux
Find Particular Directory Size in Linux

If you are after multiple directory sizes, you can also list them:

$ du screenshots/ august/ 
Find Multiple Directory Sizes in Linux
Find Multiple Directory Sizes in Linux

The file directory sizes in your home directory can be achieved in the following manner:

$ du ~/Downloads/ ~/Documents/ ~/Desktop/ 
Find Home Directory Sizes in Linux
Find Home Directory Sizes in Linux

It will list all other associated sub-directories to their root level.

3. Listing Directory Sizes in Human-Readable Format

In the above-covered examples, the directory sizes were listed in kilobytes format. To get an output in a human-readable format, implement the du command with the "-h" tag as a command argument:

$ du -h 
$ du -h screenshots
Find Directory Size in Human-Readable Format
Find Directory Size in Human-Readable Format

4. Listing Directory Sizes in Specified Formats

You can specify whether you want the targeted directory size display to be in kilobytes (k) or megabytes (m).

$ du -k August/
$ du -m August/
Find Directory Size in Format
Find Directory Size in Format

5. Listing a Directory Total Size

The du command is implemented by combining it with the "-s" and "-h" flags. In this case, the grand total size of the “LinuxShellTips” directory is 13M or 13 megabytes.

$ du -sh  

For the combined grand total of targeted multiple directories, use the following command:

$ du -sh Documents/ Downloads/ Desktop/ 

The below command lists the sub-directory sizes of the targeted directories and sums them up to a final value.

$ du -ch Documents/ Downloads/ Desktop/
List Total Size of Directory
List Total Size of Directory

You can also combine the du command with the grep command, to sum up, a directory’s total size.

$ du -ch Documents/ | grep total
Find Total Size of Directory
Find Total Size of Directory

6. N-th Level Listing of Directory and Sub-Directory Sizes

This option is recommended for a Linux system with a large and deep-rooted directory tree structure. You might want to know the combined size of specific directories from N levels deep.

$ du -h --max-depth=2 ~/Downloads
Limit Depth of Directory Listing with Sizes
Limit Depth of Directory Listing with Sizes

The "--max-depth" parameter specifies the depth you want to reach from the current directory structure. It could be 1, 2, 3, etc.

7. Listing and Sorting Directories Based on Size

This command helps you know the disk size usage of a parent working directory (pwd) directory from a specified sub-directory level. It sorts them by size.

$ du -h --max-depth=1 | sort -hr
Listing and Sorting Directory Sizes
Listing and Sorting Directory Sizes

8. Listing Directory and File Sizes

If you want your directory sizes list to be associated with directory files, include the "-a" flag in your du command.

$ du -ah screenshots/
Listing Directory and File Sizes
Listing Directory and File Sizes

9. Listing Directory Sizes by Excluding File Types

Maybe you don’t want your listed directory size to account for any file with an extension like “.mp4”. You could implement this du command in the following manner from your parent working directory.

$ du -ch --exclude='*.mp4' | grep total 
Listing Directory Sizes By Excluding File Types
Listing Directory Sizes By Excluding File Types

This tutorial has made listing directory and sub-directory sizes in a Linux environment is a non-issue. You now know more than one way to achieve this objective. For more references to the du command, key in man du on your Linux terminal.

Ravi Saive
I am an Experienced GNU/Linux expert and a full-stack software developer with over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies. Founder of TecMint.com, LinuxShellTips.com, and Fossmint.com. Over 150+ million people visited my websites.

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