What happens when you scan a drive.
- 01
Pick a drive or folder
Free scans your home drive; Pro can point at any local or network-mapped drive Space Wizard can see.
- 02
Cloud-sync folders are skipped
OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, Box, pCloud and MEGA folders are excluded by default, since their placeholder files don't reflect real local usage. You can include them instead if you want.
- 03
The scan walks the filesystem
On macOS and Linux it shells out to the native `du` command for speed; on Windows, or if `du` isn't available, it falls back to a Node.js directory walk. Either way, results are grouped into categories as they come in.
- 04
Duplicates get a three-pass check
Files are first grouped by exact byte size. Survivors get a partial hash of the first 4KB to rule out near-misses cheaply. Only the files that still match get a full SHA-1 hash before being shown as confirmed duplicates.
- 05
You see bars or a donut
The same scan result renders as a bar chart or a donut chart — whichever you'd rather read — broken down by category, with the biggest offender called out.
- 06
Clear what you don't need
Multi-select duplicates or browse the Files tab directly. Anything deleted goes to the system trash or recycle bin, not gone for good.
No accounts. No sync. No telemetry.
Space Wizard is allowed to be offline and stay useful. It never phones home, and there is no cloud account to create. It just scans your disk and helps you tidy it.
Want the full technical reference?
Scan architecture, the hashing strategy, and exactly what the license tiers gate — for IT review.