vidu

A blazingly fast disk usage analyzer and cleaning utility for the terminal.

vidu combines the speed of parallel scanning with intelligent junk detection, duplicate finding, and safe cleaning capabilities. Think of it as ncdu with superpowers for disk cleanup.

Features

Disk Analysis

• Parallel scanning - Uses all CPU cores via rayon for fast directory traversal
• Smart caching - Compressed LZ4 cache for instant restarts on large directories
• Real-time progress - Live file/directory counts during scanning
• Multiple sort modes - Sort by size, name, modification time, or item count

Cleaning Capabilities

• Junk detection - Auto-detects build artifacts, caches, and temporary files:

  • Build directories: node_modules, target/, __pycache__, .next/, dist/, build/
  • Cache files: .cache/, *.tmp, *.swp, *~
  • System junk: .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, desktop.ini
  • Log files: *.log, logs/

• Duplicate finder - Content-based detection using BLAKE3 hashing:

  • Multi-stage filtering: size → partial hash (4KB) → full hash
  • Identifies wasted space from duplicate files
  • Group duplicates for easy review

• System cache detection - Finds and measures:

  • Package managers: npm, cargo, pip, yarn, pnpm, go, composer
  • Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Chromium, Edge
  • System: font caches, thumbnail caches, trash

• Analysis views:

  • File type breakdown by category (Documents, Images, Video, Code, etc.)
  • Age analysis to find old/unused files
  • Large file finder (top N biggest files)

Safe Deletion

• Trash support - Cross-platform trash via the trash crate (default)
• Permanent delete - Optional direct deletion with confirmation
• Batch operations - Mark multiple items and clean at once
• Confirmation dialogs - Review before any destructive action

Installation

From source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Sekinal/vidu.git
cd vidu

# Build and install
cargo install --path .

Requirements

• Rust 1.70+ (uses edition 2021)
• A terminal with Unicode support

Usage

# Analyze current directory
vidu

# Analyze a specific path
vidu /path/to/directory

# Force fresh scan (ignore cache)
vidu --fresh

# Show hidden files
vidu --hidden

Keybindings

Navigation

Key	Action
↑ / k	Move up
↓ / j	Move down
← / h / Backspace	Go to parent directory
→ / l / Enter	Enter directory / Preview file
g / Home	Go to first item
G / End	Go to last item
PgUp / PgDn	Page up/down
~	Go to scan root

Actions

Key	Action
d / Delete	Delete selected item
Space	Mark/unmark item for batch operations
r	Refresh current directory
R	Full rescan from root
p	Preview file contents

Cleaning

Key	Action
J	Show junk analysis
u	Show duplicate files
T	Show file type breakdown
o	Show old/unused files
L	Show large files
K	Show system caches
c	Clean marked/selected items
!	Toggle deletion mode (Trash/Permanent)

View

Key	Action
s	Cycle sort mode (size/name/modified/count)
S	Toggle sort order (asc/desc)
.	Toggle hidden files
/	Search in current directory

General

Key	Action
?	Show/hide help
q / Esc	Quit / Go back / Close popup

Comparison with Other Tools

Feature	vidu	ncdu	dust	dua
Parallel scanning	✅	❌	✅	✅
Caching	✅	❌	❌	❌
Junk detection	✅	❌	❌	❌
Duplicate finder	✅	❌	❌	❌
System cache detection	✅	❌	❌	❌
File type analysis	✅	❌	❌	❌
Age analysis	✅	❌	❌	❌
Safe trash deletion	✅	❌	❌	❌
Batch cleaning	✅	❌	❌	❌
Interactive TUI	✅	✅	❌	✅
Delete files	✅	✅	❌	✅
vim keybindings	✅	❌	N/A	❌

Architecture

src/
├── analyzer/       # Analysis modules
│   ├── age.rs          # File age analysis
│   ├── caches.rs       # System cache detection
│   ├── duplicates.rs   # Duplicate file finder
│   ├── file_types.rs   # File categorization
│   ├── hashing.rs      # BLAKE3 content hashing
│   ├── junk.rs         # Junk detection logic
│   ├── large_files.rs  # Large file finder
│   ├── patterns.rs     # Junk pattern definitions
│   └── presets.rs      # Cleaning presets
├── app/            # Application state & logic
│   ├── state.rs        # App state management
│   ├── actions.rs      # Action handlers
│   └── input.rs        # Keybinding definitions
├── cleaner/        # Deletion functionality
│   ├── safe_delete.rs  # Trash/permanent delete
│   └── batch.rs        # Batch cleaning operations
├── scanner/        # Directory scanning
│   ├── entry.rs        # Entry data structure
│   ├── scan.rs         # Parallel scanner
│   ├── preview.rs      # File preview
│   └── progress.rs     # Scan progress tracking
├── ui/             # Terminal UI
│   ├── render.rs       # Main render function
│   ├── theme.rs        # Color theme
│   └── components/     # UI components
├── cache.rs        # Scan result caching
├── config.rs       # Configuration
└── main.rs         # Entry point

Configuration

vidu looks for a config file at ~/.config/vidu/config.toml:

[general]
deletion_mode = "trash"  # "trash" or "permanent"
show_hidden = false

[junk_detection]
# Additional directories to treat as junk
custom_directories = ["vendor", ".bundle"]
# Additional file patterns to treat as junk
custom_files = ["*.bak", "*.orig"]
# Directories to never mark as junk
protected = [".git", ".ssh", ".gnupg"]

Performance

vidu is designed for speed:

• Parallel I/O - Directory traversal uses rayon's work-stealing thread pool
• Streaming hashing - Large files are hashed in chunks, not loaded into memory
• Multi-stage duplicate detection - Size filter → 4KB partial hash → full hash
• Compressed caching - LZ4-compressed cache files for fast serialization
• Lazy analysis - Analysis views compute on-demand, not during scan

Dependencies

Key dependencies:

• ratatui - Terminal UI framework
• crossterm - Cross-platform terminal handling
• rayon - Parallel iteration
• blake3 - Fast cryptographic hashing
• trash - Cross-platform trash support
• serde + bincode - Serialization for caching
• lz4_flex - Fast compression

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit issues and pull requests.

Acknowledgments

Inspired by:

• ncdu - The classic disk usage analyzer
• dust - A more intuitive du
• dua - Disk Usage Analyzer with parallel traversal