The Files app has beaten Microsoft to the punch once again. The same app that added tabs to file management far before Windows 11's File Explorer has added a clever way to show folder sizes.
A recent update to Files adds a button in the size column to calculate the size of a folder. The solution is a clever compromise that adds a simple way to show folder sizes without eating up system resources by showing the sizes of all folders.
The same update adds some other handy features like the option to remove all tags from a file.
Files is not the first third-party file management app to show folder sizes; OneCommander also has the option. But I enjoy following the development of Files. The app looks like what File Explorer should be. It also often adds features before Microsoft adds similar options to File Explorer.
View the full changelog ↴
Files v4.1.3: What's New
Calculate folder size on demand
When the Calculate folder sizes option is turned off in Settings, a View size button now appears in the Size column. Clicking it will calculate the size of that folder on demand.
Retain selection across layouts
When switching between layouts, the previously selected item now stays selected, so you don’t lose your place when changing layouts.
You can now quickly clear every tag assigned to one or more files. There are a few ways to use the new action:
- From the context menu — right-click an item, open the Tags submenu, and choose Remove tags.
- From the toolbar — when the Edit Tags button is pinned to the toolbar, the same option appears in its menu.
- From the Command Palette — open the Command Palette and search for Remove tags. You can also assign your own keyboard shortcut to it from Settings.
If you haven’t pinned the Edit Tags button to the toolbar, you can add it in a few steps:
- Right-click the toolbar and select Customize toolbar.
- Expand the File System group on the left.
- Drag Edit Tags… to the list of added toolbar items.
Updated OneDrive icon
The OneDrive icon has been updated to the latest version. Files now loads it directly from the OneDrive executable, so it always matches the icon used by OneDrive itself.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue with extracting tar archives.
- Fixed an issue where the Signatures page would occasionally cause a crash.
- Fixed an issue where the Play action wasn’t available when a single media file was selected.
- Fixed an issue where Smart Extract would extract archives to the wrong location when switching tabs.
- Fixed an issue where tag search excluded folders when grouping by type.
- Fixed an issue where thumbnails would sometimes fail to refresh after a file was modified.
- Fixed an issue where a BitLocker locked drive wasn’t displayed.
Why doesn't File Explorer show folder sizes?
If you browse around File Explorer, you'll notice folders have a blank space next to them under the size column. To calculate the size of a folder, Windows needs to perform a recursive scan and add together the size of every file within a folder.
A recursive scan would not be an issue for a reasonably sized folder, but if you have a folder with thousands of files and subfolders, the scan would eat up system resources and slow things down.
As a quick side note, File Explorer does show the size of zipped folders, but that's because Windows 11 treats those as individual files, not as folders.
There are ways to make File Explorer show folder sizes, but they require mods. Windows Forum has an excellent piece detailing the process of using Windhawk to show folder sizes in File Explorer.
If you'd like a gauge of how long a recursive scan for a folder takes, hover your mouse over any folder and wait until a file size appears. It may only take a moment for a single folder, but if your PC had to do a similar scan for any folder on your screen, it would not be a smooth experience.
Files takes a different approach to showing the size of a folder by adding a prompt within the size column. I think it's more user friendly and is a clever compromise to showing folder sizes.
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