Diskghost 👻

Fast disk-usage & duplicate finder, written in Rust.
Find where your space went, hunt down byte-identical duplicates, and reclaim the space — from a CLI, a JSON API for agents, or a modern desktop app.

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Features

• Parallel scan (jwalk + rayon) — total size, biggest sub-folders and biggest files, files-directly-in-root, and a count of unreadable/skipped entries. Also reports the drive's free / total space and how long the scan took.
• Correct duplicate detection — group by size → collapse hard links (same physical file, so wasted is real) → first-block pre-hash → full BLAKE3 hash, all in parallel.
• Reclaim duplicates — delete, send to the OS trash/recycle bin, or replace a copy with a hard link. Dry-run by default.
• Delete a file or folder — diskghost rm <path>, permanently or to the OS trash. Parallel unlink for speed, never follows symlinks (can't escape the target), refuses a drive root, dry-run by default, reports how long it took.
• Scan options — exclude globs (node_modules, *.tmp), max depth, follow-symlinks.
• Live progress + cancel — long scans report files/bytes and can be stopped; a cancelled scan is clearly labelled as a partial result.
• One walk, whole tree — the scan builds an in-memory tree, so the GUI drills into any sub-folder and back up instantly, without touching the disk again. Deleting from the GUI updates the tree in place.
• What grew since last time — save a scan as a snapshot and compare a later one against it: which folders grew or shrank, which are new, which are gone. Every directory is recorded (not just the biggest), so the comparison works at any depth. The GUI keeps a history per scanned folder automatically.
• Three faces, one Rust core:
  • a CLI with --json output for scripts and agents (headless);
  • a modern desktop GUI (Tauri) with a treemap, folder picker, drag & drop and one-click reclaim.

Install

# Install the `diskghost` command globally, straight from GitHub (no crates.io):
cargo install --git https://github.com/kingchenc/diskghost diskghost-cli

# ...or from a local checkout:
cargo install --path crates/diskghost-cli

# ...or grab a prebuilt binary from the GitHub Releases page (Linux/macOS/Windows,
# each with a SHA256 checksum + build-provenance attestation) — no toolchain needed.

CLI usage

# Biggest sub-folders and files
diskghost scan "C:\Users\me\Desktop" --top 20

# Scan options
diskghost scan . --exclude node_modules --exclude "*.tmp" --max-depth 3 --follow-symlinks

# Duplicates (ignore anything under 5 MB)
diskghost dupes "D:\Media" --min-mb 5

# Reclaim: dry-run first (default), then apply
diskghost dupes "D:\Media" --min-mb 5 --reclaim trash          # shows what would happen
diskghost dupes "D:\Media" --min-mb 5 --reclaim trash --apply  # actually acts
#   --reclaim delete | trash | hardlink   (one file per group is always kept)

# Delete a file or folder — dry-run first (default), then apply
diskghost rm "D:\old_project\target"            # shows how many files/dirs/bytes would go
diskghost rm "D:\old_project\target" --apply    # permanently delete (files unlinked in parallel)
diskghost rm "D:\old_project\target" --trash --apply   # send to the OS recycle bin instead
#   never follows symlinks (can't escape the target); refuses a drive root

# What grew since last time: save a snapshot, compare against it later
diskghost scan "C:\Users\me" --save before.json
diskghost scan "C:\Users\me" --since before.json          # scan + what grew/shrank/appeared/vanished
diskghost scan "C:\Users\me" --since before.json --save after.json
diskghost diff before.json after.json                      # compare two saved snapshots
diskghost diff before.json after.json --at "C:\Users\me\Downloads"   # ...at a sub-folder

Snapshots are plain JSON, so a scheduled task (cron, Task Scheduler) that runs diskghost scan <dir> --since last.json --save last.json --json gives you a daily "what grew" report with nothing else to set up.

Headless / agent mode

Add --json to any command for machine-readable output:

diskghost scan . --json          # total_size, children, top_files, root_files, skipped, cancelled …
diskghost dupes . --min-mb 10 --json   # duplicate groups with reclaimable bytes
diskghost scan . --since old.json --json   # the report plus a "diff" object (grown/shrunk/added/removed)
diskghost diff old.json new.json --json    # just the diff

Perfect for wiring into an automation/agent that decides what to clean.

Desktop app (GUI)

A modern Tauri UI lives in gui/ — Browse or drag a folder onto the window, hit Scan size for a treemap + biggest folders/files (click a tile or a breadcrumb to drill in and back up — served from the in-memory tree, so it is instant; Rescan walks the disk again), or Find duplicates to sort/filter groups and reclaim their space with one click. Scans show live progress and can be cancelled. Every complete scan is kept as a snapshot; pick an earlier one under Since and Show changes colours the treemap and folder bars by what grew or shrank and lists new and removed folders. From gui/src-tauri:

cargo tauri dev      # run the app
cargo tauri build    # bundle an installer

Why it's fast — and correct

• Parallel directory walk across all cores; a single pass counts files and directories, and builds the whole tree in memory so navigating it costs no further I/O.
• Duplicate detection never hashes more than it must: size buckets first, hard links collapsed, a cheap first-block pre-hash, then BLAKE3 — streamed, so large files never load into RAM.
• Hard links are not counted as duplicates, so the "reclaimable" number is the space you actually get back.

Layout

Diskghost/
├── crates/
│   ├── diskghost-core/   the engine: scan tree, duplicates, reclaim, snapshots + diff (a library)
│   └── diskghost-cli/    the `diskghost` command
└── gui/                  Tauri desktop app (modern dark UI; ui/lib.js has Node unit tests)

Roadmap

• Core: parallel scan, folder/file sizes, hard-link-aware duplicate detection
• CLI with human + JSON output, scan options, reclaim (delete/trash/hardlink)
• Live progress + cancellation
• Modern GUI: treemap, folder picker, drag & drop, one-click reclaim
• Delete files/folders (CLI rm + GUI) — permanent or to the OS trash, parallel unlink
• Drive free/total space + scan & delete timings (CLI + GUI)
• CI (fmt/clippy/test/bench on 3 OS) + release binaries with checksums + GUI installers
• Interactive treemap drill-up / breadcrumbs, served from an in-memory tree
• Snapshots & "what grew since last time" (CLI --save/--since/diff, GUI history)

Development

cargo test --workspace                                   # unit + integration tests
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings    # lints (CI gate)
cargo bench -p diskghost-core                             # criterion benchmarks
node --test gui/ui/lib.test.js                            # GUI helper unit tests

License

MIT — see LICENSE.