KDE's disk-usage analyzer: scans local, remote, or removable disks and renders the result as concentric segmented rings (a sunburst view), letting you zoom into hotspots and open, manage, or delete files in place. Part of KDE Gear; C++/Qt, GPL.
Originated as Max Howell's standalone app (methylblue.com); absorbed into KDE Extra-Gear then KDE Gear and now maintained by the KDE community; KDE e.V. is the MS Store publisher
License
GPL
GPL-2.0-only or GPL-3.0-only
Price
Free
Free and open source; KDE e.V. is donation-funded
Launched
First public release as a standalone application
GitHub stars
302 (as of 2026-11-01)
First release
Domain registered
(kde.org)
Last seen alive
Checks
Mechanical checks derived from the fields above. Each row is one fact; "not yet checked" means exactly that, not a failure. There is no composite score; read them together.
Track record
about 22 years
Source published
Yes
Release signing
Signed
Security contact
Yes
Reproducible builds
Not yet checked
Telemetry
None
Runs elevated
Never
Auto-update channel
Signed
Recent activity
Last seen 2 days ago
Source at invent.kde.org/utilities/filelight (canonical) with a GitHub mirror at github.com/KDE/filelight
Windows build ships signed via KDE e.V.'s MS Store publisher account; Linux/BSD builds arrive through signed distro repositories; KDE Gear source tarballs are GPG-signed
KDE publishes security@kde.org and a vulnerability-handling policy
No telemetry framework in the application; KDE desktop apps ship offline
MS Store manifest declares runFullTrust - an unsandboxed full-trust Win32 package running with the user's own rights, not administrator elevation
Updates ride the signed MS Store channel or the distro package manager
KDE's own privacy/trace cleaner, shipping in the same Gear collection.
Research notes
Started as Max Howell's standalone Qt app hosted on methylblue.com; he mailed kde-announce for v1.0 on Sept 8, 2006, after which it was absorbed into KDE Extra-Gear and today ships inside KDE Gear, community-maintained (Martin Sandsmark et al.).
Howell later created Homebrew; Filelight's signature is the concentric segmented-ring 'sunburst' filemap rather than the classic treemap.
GPL-2.0-only or GPL-3.0-only, C++/Qt/KDE Frameworks; the Windows build is published to the MS Store by KDE e.V. and produced through the Craft packaging system.
Rides the KDE Gear release train rather than its own cadence (e.g. 25.08.2, Sept 30, 2025).
MS Store manifest declares capability: runFullTrust.
Max Howell's own v1.0 announcement to the kde-announce/KDE-Extra-Gear lists (archived by LWN) - the earliest author promotion found; the app had circulated in earlier versions on methylblue.com since 2004.
It started some months ago. I'd awake at night with images of concentric segmented rings flashing around my mind, calling to me, commanding me, jeering me, begging me to finish what I'd started. ... Then I realised they were actually asking me to finish Filelight. So I did. I hope you like it, my uncle did. — Problem statement