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In nautilus (or nemo) file manager, the "Size" column shows the filesize for files and the number of items contained in a folder for subdirectories:

enter image description here

Number of items is not that important for me, it would be more useful if I could make this column show the total size contained under the directory. I had an extension on windows called foldersize which shows what I mean:

enter image description here

I think it involved a service which ran in the background monitoring filesystem modifications in order to make sure the column was kept up to date.

I am interested to know if there is any similar extension to nautilus, I would also be open to switching to another file manager to get this functionality. I am aware of the Disk Usage Analyser in Ubuntu, but what I'm looking for is a solution with file manager integration.

wim
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    I know that nobody has answered your question, but i was wondering if you found something. I currently switch to Nemo, and the only extra info I get is a bar under the Filesystems that shows me how full they are, but nothing for a per folder basis. – Felipe Oct 18 '13 at 16:17
  • No, I haven't found a solution yet. I am also using Nemo. – wim Oct 19 '13 at 19:28
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    I've made a feature request for it: https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/637 – Adam Ryczkowski Jun 17 '14 at 09:38
  • That nemo feature request was closed, with (as far as I can tell) no plan to implement it. 9 years on from this OP, is there still no Linux file manager that will show folder total content sizes? That's seems kind of incredible, given that MacOS has been doing it for over a decade... – Glen Whitney Dec 13 '22 at 02:04
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    @GlenWhitney Still don't have any solution to offer, unfortunately. I use ncdu in a terminal when I need this info. I'm still continuing to watch this question in hopes of new answers, even though I don't use Ubuntu any more. – wim Dec 13 '22 at 03:19
  • dsz's answer put me on Double-Commander and a lot of customization later, it's tolerable. – Glen Whitney Dec 13 '22 at 23:56

4 Answers4

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Not sure if this will help as it's not exactly what you're looking for, but you can display the file size under the icon:

  1. Open the file explorer
  2. Go to places
  3. Select preferences
  4. Select display tab

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-tweak-nautilus-to-display-size-of-files-under-their-name.html

However, this is probably a more direct answer to your question: Show current folder size in Nautilus

Community
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Jens Bodal
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I found two tools!

GUI: Double-Commander, will add the "deep" sizes if you hit Alt+Shift+Enter. Unfortunately, it's not sticky, need to be done again when you change to another folder :-(

CLI only: vfn

Alt+Z configures it to show deep folder sizes; AND it's sticky!

It feels a little like ncdu, but with file management stuff too.

A little counter-intuative on the UI front to me, (e for erase (rather than a delete), h for help; ? launches a sub-shell), but it does the job.

vfu is the winner for me; I'll get used to the odd key-bindings!

dsz
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  • Typo: on your first reference to vfu you mistakenly say vfn – Mike Lawrence Aug 12 '22 at 16:05
  • I reluctantly use Double-Commander: it looks and behaves fairly clunky, and I turned off most of its cluttered UI, and made the second file view close to zero-width (usually not needed and apparently can't be closed -- I guess it feels it has to always live up to its name). Also I didn't like that the only "type" field it had was mime type, not a plain description, which led to: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/728346/most-thorough-way-to-determine-the-user-perspective-type-of-a-file-in-linux as I tried to make a WDX plugin for a plain-language file type. – Glen Whitney Dec 13 '22 at 23:54
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Always calculating the disk usage of a directory accurately (including hardlinks etc.) would slow you down, so it is not done. (With large directories I even have to wait quite a while to get the number of items.)

If you want to analyze disk usage try gdmap or baobab. There are even more tools.

not-a-user
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    I mentioned in my question already I'm aware of baobab (it's the same as Ubuntu disk usage analyzer) and I also have gdmap. Neither of these can be integrated into the file manager. Calculating the usage of a directory does not necessarily have to be slow, if you have a daemon which monitors filesystem changes and updates an index accordingly. Similar to using find vs using updatedb and locate – wim Dec 04 '13 at 16:03
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    Slowness is not an answer, and it's one of the simplest problems to solve. Plus its a subject reference. – nullsteph Nov 18 '15 at 02:49
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Krusader will calculate the size of one or directories. This is very useful when you are trying to figure out how much data you can fit on a a CD or DVD data archive disk.

LinuxParadigm
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  • Unhelpful answer. Installed Krusader just for this, and no option anywhere to set this. If it's possible, tell us how to, or you're not answering the question. – dsz Aug 16 '21 at 00:52
  • @dsz, you may find more info on this link: https://askubuntu.com/questions/192609/how-to-get-the-size-for-all-subdirs-in-krusader – qamnott Sep 07 '21 at 10:32