GrandPerspective is a small utility for Mac OS X that can draw two- dimensional views of disk use within a file system. This can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space.
The graphical representation is a logical one, where each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file's size. Files in the same folder appear together, but other than that the placement of files is arbitrary. You can observe this by resizing the view window. The location of files will change, in order to keep the rectangles as square as possible.
- Mac OS X, 10.5 or higher
- PowerPC or Intel processor
This version of GrandPerspective is released as two separate files:
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GrandPerspective-GRANDPERSPECTIVE_SOFTWARE_VERSION_ID.dmg
This is the main release file. It contains all you need to run the application. To install the application, open the disk image and drag the application icon onto your Applications folder, or wher'ever you want to put it onto your file system. Next, run the application by clicking on the icon.
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GrandPerspective-GRANDPERSPECTIVE_SOFTWARE_VERSION_ID-src.tgz
This contains the source code of the application. It consists of the Objective C source code, as well as various auxiliary files, such as the nib files that are used to construct the GUI.
Note: From Version 1.0 onwards localized versions of GrandPerspective are released for a subset of releases, those whose second number in the version string is even. These versions do not introduce new features. Next to updated translated resources they will only include fixes, minor cosmetic changes, and refactoring "behind the scenes".
The GrandPerspective application has been released as Open Source under the GNU General Public License. See COPYING.txt for details.
For more information about the application, please visit the website at http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net. From there, you can download the latest release of the software. It is also possible to report bugs, make a donation, suggest additional features, provide more general feedback, etc.
Special thanks to all that have provided localizations of the application: Chris Li, Maxime Hadjinlian, Javier Alfonso and Helge Baumann.
Many thanks to everyone that has shown support by making donations. They have been used to fund the required upgrade to Leopard, which has enabled me to build Universal Binaries.
Also thanks to Martin Kahr who made Universal Binaries available for early releases of GrandPerspective, and to Craig Hughes who helped me early on to make the source code Intel-compatible.
Thanks to Miles Ponson (iTweek) for providing the free set of "knobs" icons, three of which I used for the toolbar (the images for the Reveal, Delete and Rescan actions to be precise; the Open icon is my own concoction).
Thanks to Keith Blount for developing and making available the source code of various handy utility classes. His KBPopUpToolbarItem class provides the pop-up menu functionality of the Rescan button in the toolbar.
Thanks to the many users that have reported bugs and suggested improvements. This has definitely made the application better than it would otherwise have been. Lucky0 deserves a special mention for the amount of useful feedback given.
Finally thanks to all that have helped to get the word out about the application. Developing the application may be fun, but having actual users makes it worthwhile.
The GrandPerspective application has been developed by Erwin Bonsma. Please visit the website at http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net for details on how to contact me.