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Show HN: Visualize your Dropbox Space Usage
- kcon 13y agoI made the exact same thing at PennApps Fall 2013! Great minds think alike. ;) https://github.com/kevincon/utilityknife https://github.com/kevincon/utilityknife
- kevincrane 13y ago"Treemap Visualizer would like access to all files and folders in your Dropbox. This app will be able to read and modify everything." Has anyone tried this yet? Something about "hey this app may or may not alter every file you have on Dropbox" makes me wary, even if the title does imply it's a read-only operation.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoIt's absolutely ridiculous that the permissions required are no more granular than that. Is that the fault of the app or of the Dropbox API?
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoOk from what I can tell from Dropbox [1], it's their fault. [1] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/devguide https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/devguide
- sillysaurus2 13y ago"Their"? Whose?
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agosorry, I realise that was ambiguous; dropbox's
- FriedPickles 13y agoThat's the dropbox API. Apparently there's no read/write distinction, and access to metadata is considered a "read", so this app needs full read/write permission.
- umeshunni 13y agoOnce you've tried it and got your treemap, you can unauthorize the app from https://www.dropbox.com/account/security#applications https://www.dropbox.com/account/security#applications
- hamxiaoz 13y agoI stopped at this. OP: it'd be great if you can post some snapshots before anyone is trying to use this.
- mkx 13y agoOP here. Like people have mentioned, it's the granularity of the Dropbox API. Sorry about that. The backdrop of the landing page is basically a screenshot of what your visualization will look like.
- beambot 13y ago$> baobab ~/Dropbox/
- stedaniels 13y agoI'm intrigued, but not enough to click. Ahh. Can someone else take the leap? Provide some details, screenshots, any credentials about who made this? Can't be bothered looking into how hard it is for someone nefarious to get something on *.mit.edu subdomain.
- jhaaps 13y agoSample output would be great.
- toomuchtodo 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6736049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6736049
- vineetdhanawat 13y ago"This app will be able to read and modify everything." Why modify?
- kcon 13y agoUnfortunately, there's currently no read-only access for Dropbox API users to access all of the user's files and folders (e.g. to make a treemap visualization). It's read/write or nothing.
- vineetdhanawat 13y agoouch.
- j_s 13y agoDropbox has left it difficult to track down large files in their web interface; nice to see someone fill in the (purposely) missing piece.
- JosephRedfern 13y agoScreenshot: http://i.imgur.com/z9hkHT7.png http://i.imgur.com/z9hkHT7.png The colour and area of the blocks would seem to correspond to the file type and file size respectively.
- jaynos 13y agoThanks for that. I thought it broke for me, but then I realized my entire dropbox is one movie file and the blue screen was appropriate.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- aflam 13y agoDid anyone dare authorize? I find using simple commands like `du` and `tree` sufficient for me...
- blackstache 13y agoThis is just like http://windirstat.info/ http://windirstat.info/ which can be run on the desktop. Very handy tool...
- lelandbatey 13y agoYep, and if you're on OS X, you can use Disk Inventory X[0] to get the same tree-like layout. [0] http://www.derlien.com/ http://www.derlien.com/
- Groxx 13y agoI've been using GrandPerspective for quite a long time. Pretty happy with it, lots of ways to drill down deeper / filter / etc to get at what you're looking for. http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ edit: oh, hah, they're almost identical. interesting.
- lelandbatey 13y agoAh, I have used both, but I also haven't been using OS X for the past couple years. One of them, I didn't remember which, was actually a PPC program that required a Rosetta to work. At some point it stopped working, and I switched to the other. Since I hadn't used them in a while, I forgot which was which. However, some further research says that Disk Inventory X was the PPC program. In that case, I'd also recommend GrandPerspective.
- dcg 13y agoSpaceSniffer is another great tool for Windows that uses a treemap to visualize files on disk. http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Robadob 13y agoOn my 5-year old netbook and my pretty decent spec desktop I just get a white page that goes grey when I move the mouse over it. :(
- mkx 13y agoMaybe you have too many files in your Dropbox for the app to handle? It only displays files over 10kb, though..
- xymostech 13y agoWould be nice if it would tell me where things are located. I can tell they're grouped by folder, but it doesn't tell me what folder that is or where it is within the Dropbox folder. (I know I can find it in my actual Dropbox folder, just wondering why that information is missing from here) Also, there seems to be a bunch of "undefinedByte"-sized files lying around. Anyone know what those are? Maybe 0-sized files or something?
- indraneel24 13y agoOP: how are you getting around 429 errors thrown by Dropbox when you do a full dirwalk like this?
- mkx 13y agoSeems like Dropbox allows that many metadata calls. When I was testing this for myself, I started getting 429s when I would make 5+ refreshes in a minute, but it also rate limits on a user-by-user basis.
- anigbrowl 13y agoTreemaps have been around for ages. why not just run one on your local dropbox folder?
- misterparker 13y agoI'm sure this was a cool and fun dev project. I've used a program like this before: http://www.derlien.com/ http://www.derlien.com/ to visualize and edit/delete files. But for space management have since switched to http://spacieapp.com/ http://spacieapp.com/
- Renaud 13y agoI fail to see the need to authorize a third party to visualise your Dropbox when your files probably all sit at least on one of your machines anyway and there are perectly fine open source tools that do treemap visualisation very well: * For Windows,use http://windirstat.info/ http://windirstat.info/ * For Mac, use http://www.derlien.com/ http://www.derlien.com/ * For Linux, use http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/ http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/
- j_s 13y agoI use Dropbox as a glorified email attachment sharing system without installing the desktop client; this is perfect for me because there is no way in the web interface to find large files.
- iancarroll 13y agoGuys, seriously. Somebody built something. He's sharing it with you. Yes, there are other things that can do it. You don't have to leap on every thread and complain that someone else had the same idea.