# The &filelight; Handbook

Max Howell

    max.howell@methylblue.com

Martin Sandsmark

    martin.sandsmark@kde.org

2006 Max Howell
2009 Martin Sandsmark
&FDLNotice;
2013-05-25
1.20 (&kde; 4.11)

&filelight; creates an interactive map of concentric segmented-rings that helps visualize disk usage on your computer.

KDE Filelight du disk usage

## Introduction

&filelight; 1.20 Screenshot
Screenshot

&filelight; allows you to quickly understand exactly where your diskspace is being used by graphically representing your file system as a set of concentric segmented-rings. You can use it to locate hotspots of disk usage and then manipulate those areas using &konqueror;.

## Configuring &filelight;

The &filelight; settings dialog has two tabs for configuring the &filelight; options. The two tabs are Scanning and Appearance. Below is a description of the settings tabs. The &filelight; settings dialog can be found by clicking Settings Configure Filelight.

### Scanning

Scanning Screenshot
Screenshot

The scanning tab allows you to configure how &filelight; scans folders. The Do not scan these folders is used to exclude certain folders from your scan. This option is very useful for skipping folders that you may not have permissions to read, or folders that are part of a virtual filesystem, such as /proc. To add a folder to the list, click the Add... button, this will start a dialog where you can choose the folder of your choice from a tree view. To remove a folder simply select the folder of your choice and click the Remove button.

Using Scan across filesystem boundaries allows scans to enter folders that are part of other filesystems. For example, when unchecked, this will usually prevent the contents of `/mnt` from being scanned if you scan starting from the root folder `/`. A scan of remote filesystems, ⪚ NFS or Samba mounts, can generate high network traffic. To prevent scanning them check Exclude remote filesystems. The next option Exclude removable media prevents &filelight; from scanning removable media (⪚ &CD-ROM;s).

### Appearance

Appearance Screenshot
Screenshot

The Appearance tab allows you to configure the way &filelight; looks.

The Color scheme section is used to choose a color scheme for &filelight;. The color schemes are Rainbow, System Colors, and High Contrast. There is also a Contrast slider to adjust the contrast of the ring segments for easier viewing.

The Use anti-aliasing check box is used to enable the use of anti-aliasing in the &filelight; view. Selected, this option makes the ring segments have a much cleaner look.

The Vary label font sizes check box is useful when you have files or folders with long names. This option will change the size of the font to allow it to fit in the view better. When this option is enabled a Minimum font size spinbox becomes available for choosing the smallest size font to scale to.

The Show small files option is disabled by default as small files tend to clutter the &filelight; view. Enable this option if you would like to have your small files included in the &filelight; view. These files are merged all into a single multi-segment.

## Using &filelight;

### Starting &filelight;

&filelight; can be started from the K-Menu, or from the command-line

#### From the K-Menu

Open the &kde; program menu by clicking on the big K icon on your panel. This will raise the program menu. Move your cursor up the menu to the Utilities menu item. Choose &filelight;.

#### From the Command Line

You can start &filelight; by typing its name on the command line. If you give it a folder name, as in the example below, it will scan that folder.

    %filelight /home

### Scanning folders

Scanning a folder shows it's contents as a filemap. To scan a folder, use the scan menu, or type a &URL; straight into the location bar.

### Exploring Filemaps

Once a scan has completed you will be presented with a filemap that represents the folder you scanned. The filemap is a series of segmented-rings that expand from the center. Brightly colored segments are folders, gray segments are files. Segments are sized in proportion to their filesize. Segments can be nested, so for example, `/home/mxcl` will be one level outwards and within the bounds of the segment representing `/home`. Segments are labeled and hovering the mouse over segments will give you more details of that segment and its child segments.

Filemap Screenshot
Screenshot

You can open folders with your default file manager or &konsole; using the context menu for that segment. A &MMB; click opens files by mimetype, ⪚ images with Gwenview. You can right click a segment to get a context menu for the scanned folder with actions to copy the folder path to the clipboard or delete the folder or file. Left clicking segments will re-center the map on that segment.

## Menu and Command Reference

The Scan Menu

Scan Scan folder..

  Offers a folder selection dialog so you can choose a folder to scan.

&Ctrl;Home Scan Scan Home folder

  Starts a scan of the user's home folder.

Scan Scan Root folder

  Starts a scan of the root folder.

F5 Scan Rescan

  Starts a new scan of the current working folder, this is useful when changes have been made to the filesystem.

&Esc; Scan Stop

  Stops the current scan.

&Ctrl;Q Scan Quit

  Quits &filelight;.

The View Menu

&Ctrl;+ View Zoom In

  Increase the view of the filemap.

&Ctrl;- View Zoom Out

  Decrease the view of the filemap.

The Go Menu

&Alt;Up Go Up

  Moves you up one step in the filesystem to the parent folder.

Go Back

  Moves you one step back in your browsing history of the filesystem.

Go Forward

  Moves you one step forward in your browsing history of the filesystem.

Additionally &filelight; has the common &kde; Settings and Help menu items, for more information read the sections about the Settings Menu and Help Menu of the &kde; Fundamentals.

## Credits and License

### &filelight;

Program copyright 2006 Max B. Howell max.howell@methylblue.com

Program copyright 2008-2013 Martin Sandsmark martin.sandsmark@kde.org

&underGPL;

### Documentation

Documentation copyright 2003 Max B. Howell max.howell@methylblue.com

Documentation copyright 2009 Martin Sandsmark martin.sandsmark@kde.org

&underFDL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &filelight;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;
&documentation.index;