Diskhoji: a 6 MB Rust binary that shows you where your disk actually went

Every few weeks, the same popup: "Your disk is almost full." And every time, the same question— where did it all go?

Not the useless "System Data: 84 GB" summary. The actual folders. The forgotten node_modules graveyards. The 40 GB of stale Docker layers. That 4K export you swore you'd delete back in March.

The classic disk-space analyzers answered this beautifully twenty years ago. But a lot of the modern ones now ship an entire web browser just to draw a rectangle. So I built Diskhoji— one small native binary that scans fast, shows you the truth three different ways, and never phones home.

TL;DR— Diskhoji is a free, open-source (MIT) disk-space analyzer for Linux, macOS, and Windows. One standalone ~6 MB Rust binary— no Electron, no webview. Scans 1.85M files / 681 GiB in ~2.7s cold (~0.4–0.7s warm), draws a treemap, heatmap, and radial sunburst, and lets you delete straight from the map with no rescan. Binds to 127.0.0.1 only— no telemetry, no network, nothing ever leaves your machine. Oh— and there's a built-in offline mini-game to play while it scans. → diskhoji.org · github.com/singhpratech/diskhoji

(khoji— खोजी— means "seeker." Diskhoji = disk seeker.)

One binary, no browser

Diskhoji is written in Rust and compiles to a single ~6 MB executable with a native window— no Electron, no bundled Chromium, no runtime to install. Download it, run it, done:

• Linux— an AppImage
• macOS— a .app
• Windows— an .exe

Same tool, same keys, same views on every platform. The whole thing is smaller than the favicon cache of some "lightweight" desktop apps.

Three ways to see where it went

There's no single "correct" way to visualize a filesystem, so Diskhoji gives you three and lets you flip between them instantly:

• Cushion treemap— the classic. Every file and folder is a rectangle sized by how much space it eats. The 30 GB hog is the giant block on screen; you find it in about half a second.
• Heatmap grid— every item gets an equal cell, colored by size. Great for spotting the many small things pattern— a cache directory that's death by a thousand files.
• Radial rings (sunburst)— your directory tree as concentric rings from the root outward. The best mental model for "how deep is this and what's nested where."

Same scan, three lenses. Some problems are obvious in one view and invisible in the others.

Fast enough to just... run it

Diskhoji uses a parallel, work-stealing scanner that saturates every core you've got. On a real machine it catalogued 1.85 million files across 681 GiB in about 2.7 seconds cold— and 0.4–0.7 seconds warm. The treemap layout for a 2-million-node tree computes in roughly 15 ms, so panning and zooming stays smooth instead of janking every time you drill in.

The point of that speed isn't a benchmark flex. It's that scanning stops being a "go make coffee" operation. You just run it whenever, because it's basically instant.

A dashboard, not four disconnected tools

The window is one cross-linked dashboard: an explorer tree, the visualization, a file-types breakdown, and a largest-files list— all wired to each other. Click a folder in the tree and the map, the types panel, and the biggest-files list all follow. It's a single connected view of your disk, not four widgets that ignore each other.

Delete from the map— no rescan

When you find the culprit, you can delete it right there, and the UI updates immediately— no full rescan to see your reclaimed space. And it's careful about it: Diskhoji never follows symlinks, stays on a single filesystem, and refuses to delete the scan root. It won't wander off your drive or let you nuke the thing you're standing on.

Private by design

This is the part I care about most. Diskhoji binds to 127.0.0.1 only. There is no telemetry, no analytics, no network calls— nothing about your filesystem ever leaves your machine. A tool that reads every path on your disk has absolutely no business talking to the internet, so it simply doesn't.

Native window or your browser— your call

By default Diskhoji opens its own native window. But if you'd rather work in a browser— or you're on a headless box over SSH— run it with --web and it serves the same dashboard on localhost. Same engine, same views, your choice of frontend.

Oh, and there's a game 🕹️⛵

Scans are fast— but sometimes you're still watching a progress bar. So Diskhoji ships with The Seeker's Voyage: a tiny, fully offline mini-game built right into the app, on every platform, that you play while the disk scan runs in the background.

Take the helm and you're sailing east under the pasha moon— tap Space, ↑, or the screen to jump, leap the corrupt reefs, and scoop up amber bytes as your distance climbs in fathoms. It keeps score: Fathoms, Bytes, and your Best run. No connection required— it "works with the rigging cut."

It's a daft little thing, and that's exactly the point: a disk-space tool with a sense of humor that hands you something to do while it works. You can take it for a spin right on diskhoji.org— hit the ⛵ Play button up top.

Get it

• Download: diskhoji.org— AppImage / .app / .exe
• Source (MIT): github.com/singhpratech/diskhoji

It's free and open source. If it helps you reclaim a chunk of your drive, a ⭐ on the repo genuinely helps other people find it.

Your disk is an ocean. Diskhoji is the seeker that sounds it. Go find your 40 GB— then set a new high score on the way back.