Fast disk usage analyzer with a Charm interface.
cdu is a fork of gdu by Daniel Milde. The disk-analysis engine is gdu's, reused as-is — cdu keeps its speed and its byte-for-byte export parity — and rebuilds the interactive interface on the Charm stack (Bubble Tea, Lipgloss, Bubbles), adding themes, recoverable deletes, multi-select, tree-wide search, and a self-updater. The name follows the family: ncdu = ncurses du, gdu = go du, cdu = charm du.
Not the official gdu. This is an independent fork, not affiliated with or endorsed by gdu. Report cdu's own bugs at https://github.com/pottom/cdu/issues. See NOTICE.
Linux / macOS / BSD — download, verify, and install the right build:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pottom/cdu/main/install.sh | shWindows (PowerShell):
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pottom/cdu/main/install.ps1 | iexThe installers verify the release checksum — and the keyless
cosign signature, when cosign is present — before
installing. They never use sudo; if the target directory is not writable they say
so and stop.
Container:
docker run --rm -it -v "$HOME:/data" ghcr.io/pottom/cdu /dataFrom source (Go 1.26+):
go install github.com/pottom/cdu/cmd/cdu@latestUpdate an existing install to the latest release with cdu update (installed
through a package manager? update through that instead).
cdu # scan the current directory
cdu ~/ # scan a path
cdu -d # pick from the mounted disksPress ? at any time for every key. The essentials:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
↑ ↓ k j, g G |
move, jump to top / bottom |
→ ↵ l, ← h |
enter a directory, go to the parent |
/, f |
filter this directory, find files tree-wide |
s, t |
sort menu, column menu |
p, i, v, o |
theme picker, item-info pane, view a file, open in default app |
space, M, u |
mark a row, open the delete queue, unmark all |
d, D, e, U |
trash, delete for good, empty a file, undo the last trash |
r, T, F |
rescan, largest files, find duplicates |
esc, q |
back / cancel / clear marks, quit |
Deleting with d moves to the trash and is recoverable this session with U; D
deletes permanently and frees the space. A permission-denied delete offers to retry
with sudo.
The non-interactive and JSON export modes (--non-interactive, -o) are identical
to gdu's, and --classic opens gdu's original interface unchanged. See
cdu --help or man cdu for the full flag list.
Five themes ship in the binary — charm (default), midnight, ember, phosphor,
and mono (no color, for any terminal). Pick one live with p, or set
--theme, or write your own:
cdu themes # list them, in color
cdu themes dump charm > ~/.config/cdu/themes/mine.yaml
cdu --theme minecdu reads ~/.config/cdu/cdu.yaml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/cdu/cdu.yaml). On first
run it falls back, read-only, to an existing gdu config and tells you so; cdu --write-config takes it over into cdu's own file — the quickest way to a starting
config to edit.
Every persistent long flag is a config key under its flag name (show-apparent-size,
icons, folders-first, ignore-dirs, …). The sorting and theme blocks have no
single flag:
show-apparent-size: true
folders-first: true
info: true # the item-info pane at the foot of the list, on by default
sorting:
by: size # name | size | itemCount | mtime
order: desc # asc | desc
theme:
preset: midnight # charm | midnight | ember | phosphor | mono
accent: "#ff8800" # override one role of the preset (#rrggbb)Under theme, preset picks a bundled theme and any token below it (accent,
danger, text, selected, size, dim, panel, …) overrides that role's colour.
man cdu documents the full set.
make build # ./cdu, stripped
make test
make lintReleases are cut by GoReleaser on a cdu-vX.Y.Z tag: the
cross-compiled matrix, checksums, SBOMs, cosign signatures, and the
ghcr.io/pottom/cdu container image.
MIT, the same as gdu. gdu's copyright and license are intact — see
LICENSE.md and NOTICE for the fork's attribution. cdu
carries its own version and records the embedded gdu release as build metadata:
cdu vX.Y.Z+gduA.B.C.