You can use File Explorer’s “Size” search filter to find large files in Windows. That means you don’t have to use third-party apps to get a list of all the big files in Windows. Let me show you how to use the search filter and find the big files consuming your disk space.
Table of contents:
- What are File Explorer Search Filters?
- Find Large Files in Windows with File Explorer Size Filter
- Conclusion
Note: The search filter and its usage shown below will work in all versions of Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11).
What are File Explorer Search Filters?
Most don’t know this, but File Explorer has search filters, operators, and syntax that make it easy to find the exact file(s) you are looking for. For example, if you want to find files that are equal to, larger, or smaller than a specific file size, you can do that using File Explorer’s size filter. It also has other filters to find files in a specific date range, has a specific name, file extension, etc.
Learning the File Explorer search commands and syntax will help you better search and find the files faster and more accurately.
Find Large Files in Windows with File Explorer Size Filter
To find large files in Windows, we are going to use the “Size” search filter with the “>” (greater than) operator. Moreover, you can restrict or increase the search scope to a folder, drive, or entire hard disk. Depending on the search scope, be in that folder or drive in the File Explorer. For example, if you want to search the D drive, open that drive in File Explorer. On the other hand, if you wish to search the entire system for large files, open File Explorer and select “This PC” on the sidebar.
1. Find large files in file explorer
To find large files in Windows File Explorer, we will use the “size” filter with the “>” (greater than) operator.
First, use the “Windows logo key + E” keyboard shortcut or click on the File Explorer icon on the taskbar to launch Windows File Explorer. After that, select “This PC” on the sidebar. This page in File Explorer will show all the drives on your computer.
Once you are here, type “size: >1GB” in the top-right search bar and press the “Enter” key on your keyboard. As soon as you do that, File Explorer will comb through the files and list all the files that are larger than 1GB. Depending on the number of files you have, the entire search operation will take some time to complete.
Since we want to find big files, we need to sort them by file size, click on the “Sort” option, and select the “More -> Size” option.
That’s it. With that, File Explorer will show all the large files on your computer in descending order (largest to smallest). Once you see all the large files in Windows, you can do whatever you want. For example, you can delete them to free up disk space.
2. Pre-defined Size Filters
File Explorer has some simple pre-defined size filters. They are as follows:
- Empty – 0KB files (empty files)
- Tiny – between 0KB & 16KB
- Small – between 16KB & 1MB
- Medium – between 1MB & 128MB
- Large – between 128MB & 1GB
- Huge – between 1GB & 4GB
- Gigantic – greater than 4GB.
So, if you want to find files larger than 1GB, just type size: huge
in the search bar and press Enter. File Explorer filters the files and lists all the files that are greater than 1GB.
3. Find files greater than or less than a specific size
If the predefined size filters are not helpful, you can directly type the file size. For instance, you can search for files bigger or small than a specific size.
To filter files greater than the specified size, use the following syntax:
size: >500MB
To filter files smaller than the specified size, use the following syntax:
size: <500MB
4. Files of the exact size
If you want to find files of a specific size, then you can use the below filter. Of course, replace 135MB with the file size of your choice.
size: 135MB
Keep in mind that the File Explorer can sometimes round the exact size of files. For example, the above command might show both 134 MB and 136 MB files along with 135 MB files.
5. Files between a specific size
Just as you can filter files bigger or small than a specific size, you find files between a specific size. This File Explorer search command is especially useful when finding big files between a specific size range.
For example, maybe you want to find all the files with sizes between 1GB and 2 GB. In those cases, you should use the “> (greater than),” “< (less than),” and “AND” operators in combination. The File Explorer search command syntax will look like this.
size: >1GB AND <2GB
Note: Capitalization of the AND
operator is important.
Finding large files in Windows – Conclusion
As you can see, finding large, small, or even files of a certain size is pretty easy in File Explorer. Just play around a bit with the size command, and File Explorer will help you along the way with some useful suggestions in the drop-down menu.
I hope this simple and easy Windows how-to guide helped you.
If you are stuck or need help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.