FileHunter / Support

FileHunter Support

Help with choosing what to scan, Full Disk Access, reading the results and exporting a report.

Contact support

Send a FileHunter support request with a description of the issue, your Mac model and its macOS version. Please do not send passwords or exported reports that contain private file names.

Choose what to scan

  1. Click Choose a Folder or Drive.
  2. Pick a folder, or choose Macintosh HD to scan as much of your Mac as macOS allows, then click Grant Access.
  3. Results appear while the scan runs. FileHunter remembers the location, so the next time the button reads Scan followed by its name.

To scan somewhere else, click Change Scan Location in the toolbar. A whole drive can take several minutes; you can stop at any time and keep the results found so far.

Full Disk Access

macOS keeps some locations private, such as Mail, Messages, Photos and other apps’ containers. FileHunter lists the folders it could not read instead of failing. To include them:

  1. Click the hand button in the toolbar to open Privacy & Access, then Open Full Disk Access Settings.
  2. Turn on FileHunter in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.
  3. Quit and reopen FileHunter, then scan again.

Reading the results

  • Files ranks individual files by the space they use on disk. Use the filter menu in the toolbar to change the minimum size.
  • Folders shows where space adds up, including folders full of small files.
  • Apps groups app bundles with their caches and support data when FileHunter can match them to an installed app.
  • Types totals space by kind of file, such as video, images or archives.
  • Duplicates lists files with the same name and size in different places. These are possible duplicates: check the contents before removing anything.

Hard-linked files are counted once. Files kept in iCloud Drive or another cloud provider and not downloaded are called out, because they don’t use local space. FileHunter only reports: to free space, delete files yourself in Finder.

Export a report

Click the share button in the toolbar and choose where to save. The report is a JSON Lines (.jsonl) file listing the large files with their sizes, dates and paths, preceded by a summary of the scan. It is written only where you save it.

Privacy

FileHunter has no accounts of its own, ads, analytics or tracking, and it does not use the network. Read the full FileHunter Privacy Policy.