Show HN: Visualize your Dropbox Space Usage | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Visualize your Dropbox Space Usage

mkolysh.scripts.mit.edu

25 pointsmkx36 comments

I 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/

* For Mac, use http://www.derlien.com/

* For Linux, use http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/

I 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.

"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.

It'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?

Ok from what I can tell from Dropbox [1], it's their fault.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/devguide

"Their"? Whose?

sorry, I realise that was ambiguous; dropbox's

That'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.

Once you've tried it and got your treemap, you can unauthorize the app from https://www.dropbox.com/account/security#applications

I stopped at this. OP: it'd be great if you can post some snapshots before anyone is trying to use this.

OP 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.

$> baobab ~/Dropbox/

Screenshot: 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.

Thanks 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.

I made the exact same thing at PennApps Fall 2013! Great minds think alike. ;)

https://github.com/kevincon/utilityknife

"This app will be able to read and modify everything."

Why modify?

Unfortunately, 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.

ouch.

Treemaps have been around for ages. why not just run one on your local dropbox folder?

Would 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?

I'm sure this was a cool and fun dev project. I've used a program like this before: http://www.derlien.com/ to visualize and edit/delete files.

But for space management have since switched to http://spacieapp.com/

I'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.

Guys, 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.

This is just like http://windirstat.info/ which can be run on the desktop. Very handy tool...

Yep, 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/

I'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/

edit: oh, hah, they're almost identical. interesting.

Ah, 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.

SpaceSniffer is another great tool for Windows that uses a treemap to visualize files on disk.

http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer

Dropbox has left it difficult to track down large files in their web interface; nice to see someone fill in the (purposely) missing piece.

On 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. :(

Maybe you have too many files in your Dropbox for the app to handle? It only displays files over 10kb, though..

OP: how are you getting around 429 errors thrown by Dropbox when you do a full dirwalk like this?

Seems 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.

Did anyone dare authorize? I find using simple commands like `du` and `tree` sufficient for me...

Sample output would be great.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6736049

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