Overview

The QDirStat project proudly presents its latest release: QDirStat 1.6.1.

This is a stable release. It brings some new (minor) features and one bug fix:

• Much better handling for "permission denied" errors while reading directories.

• Now showing the exact byte size (134 495 994 Bytes instead of 128.3 MB) upon mouse click in the tree (right click) and in the details panel (left or right click).

• New optional tree column "Oldest File" (not enabled by default).

• Bug fix: Support for dark widget themes in File Size Histogram window.

Details

Improved Handling for "Permission Denied" Errors while Reading Directories

If you start QDirStat with insufficient permissions, you could easily overlook large subtrees in the filesystem that consume disk space, but were not visible to you. They did get a special icon, but you would have to open the parent directory in the tree view to see that.

Now, QDirStat notifies you in several ways:

• All parent directories that contain a subtree that could not be read are now displayed in dark red in the tree view.

• The Size field of those directories as well as other accumulated values (Items, Files, Subdirs) are now preceded with a "greater than" sign to indicate that there is most likely more, but that information could not be retrieved: ">7.2 MB" indicating that it's at least 7.2 MB and most likely more than that, but we don't know because one or more subdirectories could not be read.

• A message panel in the main window between the tree view and the treemap with a message that some directories could not be read.

  You can close the message with the [x] close button on its right side, but you can also simply leave it open. This is a lot less obtrusive than a pop-up dialog, yet less temporary than a message in the bottom status line that will disappear in a few seconds or when anything else is reported.

• Clicking on the "Details..." link in that message opens a separate window to report all directories that could not be read (typically because of insufficient permissions).

  This window is non-modal, i.e. you can still interact with the main window when it is open. Click on any directory that it lists to locate it in the main window: The tree view will open that branch and scroll to make it visible.

  

• In addition to the "locked folder" icon, unreadable directories are shown in bright red in the tree view.

• When an unreadable directory is selected in the tree view, the details panel now shows a large padlock icon and a message "[Permission Denied]", and the permissions are highlighted in red.

Exact Byte Size on Demand

You can now see the exact size in bytes both in the tree view and in the details panel: 134 495 994 Bytes instead of 128.3 MB. The field is still (somewhat) human readable with thousands separators (using blanks to avoid confusion with different decimal / thousands separators in different languages).

This can make it easier to compare sizes with other tools that report them in bytes or that insist in using 1000-based units (QDirStat uses 1024-based size units: 1 kB = 1024 Bytes; 1 MB = 1024 kB; 1 GB = 1024 MB; etc.).

Not using tool tips that appear automatically was a conscious decision: This level of detailed information is not needed that often, and tool tips get in the way whenever the mouse cursor lingers too long at an active spot. More often than not a tool tip obscurs other content that the user might want to read at that very moment. This is why in QDirStat in the rare cases that you are interested in those exact numbers, you have to click:

• In the tree view, right-click a size field (a left click is used for selecting an item in tree views, so the context menu is pressed into service for that purpose (only for the size column)).

  

• In the details panel, use left or right click. To indicate what fields can be clicked, they are now underlined when the mouse hovers over them.

  

  Hovering over fields that can be clicked shows them underlined, very much like a hyperlink.

  

  Clicking (left or right mouse button) shows more details: In this case, the exact byte size.

New Tree Column "Oldest File"

There is now an optional new column "Oldest File" that shows the timestamp (the mtime) of the oldest file in a subtree. This is strictly about files; directories, symlinks and special files (block or character devices, FIFOs etc.) are ignored for this.

This may be useful to spot some old cruft, for example leftover dot files in your home directory. Many programs generate such files when you start them for the first time, and they are rarely cleaned up when they fall out of use.

Notice that this column is not enabled by default. If you would like to use it, switch to layout L2 or L3, right-click the tree header to open the columns context menu, select Hidden Columns, then Show Column "Oldest File".

Of course you can also sort by this column to see the oldest files first (or last).

Bug Fix

Fixed text color in histogram in dark widget themes (GitHub Issue #117).