dust

Updated

July 31, 2026

Overview

dust is an intuitive, visual replacement for du written in Rust. It presents directory sizes as a tree-based bar chart, allowing quick identification of large files and folders consuming disk space.

Syntax

dust [options] [path...]

Common Options

Option Description
-d NUM, --depth NUM Limit directory depth traversal
-n NUM, --number-of-lines NUM Limit output to top NUM lines
-r, --reverse Reverse sort order
-i, --ignore-hidden Do not include hidden files in calculations
-e PATTERN, --filter PATTERN Exclude files matching regex pattern

Key Use Cases

  1. Finding disk space hogs visually inside directory trees.
  2. Limiting depth scans for faster directory analysis (-d).
  3. Excluding temporary build folders from storage breakdown (-e).

Examples with Explanations

Example 1: Basic Usage

dust

Scans the current directory and renders a terminal bar chart of disk usage.

Example 2: Depth Limit Scan

dust -d 2 /var/log

Analyzes disk usage under /var/log up to 2 directory levels deep.