GrandPerspective

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Open-source (GPLv2) treemap disk space visualizer for macOS, maintained solo by Erwin Bonsma since September 2005 - the oldest disk space visualizer on the platform still in active development (3.8.1, Sep 2026). Scans a volume or folder into a proportional treemap with filtering, masking, saved scans, Time Machine hard-link and cloud-file support, and in-app deletion. Identical builds ship free from SourceForge and Homebrew, or for $2.99 on the Mac App Store to cover Apple's developer-program fee.

Platforms

• macOS

Interface

• GUI

Tech stack

• Other

Objective-C, Cocoa (Xcode, XIB-built GUI); developed on SourceForge git (migrated from svn Apr 2016), per-release source tarballs; sandboxed since 1.7.0

Features

• Disk Space Visualizer

Dev-junk cleaning

Not a focus

Development

Solo developer · original author still leads

erwinbonsma

One-author project since 2005. Community supplies the localizations (11 languages, contributors credited by name) and occasional outside fixes land (Max Mueggler - the 3.2 scan-speed rework; Matthew Carroll - the Full Disk Access check). The bus factor is the obvious risk, mitigated only by GPL source and public git history.

License

GPL

GNU General Public License version 2.0 (COPYING.txt in the source tarball; SourceForge project page)

Price

Donation-supported

Free from SourceForge and Homebrew; the identical App Store edition is $2.99 ($1.99 at the May 2016 store debut) 'to cover the required developer program membership and other development costs'; SourceForge donations accepted

Launched

Sep 20, 2005

first_release_at

Repo created

Sep 11, 2005

First release

Sep 20, 2005

Last seen alive

Nov 2, 2026

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.

• GPLv2: every release ships a matching -src.tgz next to the DMG (back to 0.9.0, 2005), plus public git repos on SourceForge for source, localization, help, and docs
• Developer ID signed since 1.5.3 (Apr 2016, per release note 'digitally signed with my developer identity' to avoid Gatekeeper warnings); notarized since 2.1.0 (Dec 2018); the App Store edition is additionally Apple-signed and sandboxed
• Sandboxed since 1.7.0 (May 2016): file access via the user-selected read-write scope plus a security-scoped root-volume bookmark; full-disk scans rely on macOS Full Disk Access (TCC) - no privileged helper or setuid in the 3.8.1 source
• No telemetry or third-party SDK in the 3.8.1 source tarball; the sandbox network.client entitlement only covers user-initiated cloud-file access and openURL calls to the browser
• No in-app updater: SourceForge users get release notices via the grandperspectiv-announce mailing list; the App Store edition updates through Apple and deliberately lags a few weeks as a canary
• No dedicated security contact or SECURITY doc found; bugs and feature requests go through the public SourceForge trackers and forums

Relations

• inspired by SequoiaView (TU Eindhoven treemap visualizer for Windows)

  Site's related-software note: 'Sequoiaview is the one I bumped into first, because as it happens it was developed in Eindhoven as well.'

• inspired by KDirStat and WinDirStat (SourceForge treemap lineage)

  Same note: KDirStat and WinDirStat 'I want to mention because they are also hosted on SourceForge.'

• inspired by Disk Inventory X (the older macOS treemap visualizer)

  'GrandPerspective is developed specifically for macOS, which narrows the immediate competition down to Disk Inventory X.' DIX shipped first (Mar 2004) but last released 1.3 in Dec 2019.

• same author Erwin Bonsma's hobby games and demos (BumbleBots, Sokobubble, Gamebuino titles)

  Personal site linked from the GrandPerspective homepage; matching repos on github.com/erwinbonsma - GrandPerspective is the lone utility in a game/research portfolio.

Research notes

• The oldest disk space visualizer on macOS still in active development: 0.9.0 released 2005-09-20 on a SourceForge project registered nine days earlier, with 3.8.1 out 2026-09-13 - twenty-one years and counting. The only older Mac treemap tool, Disk Inventory X (Mar 2004), has not shipped since Dec 2019; the site itself concedes GrandPerspective is 'certainly not the first of its kind'.
• Solo side project of Erwin Bonsma (Eindhoven, NL): 'It started purely as a fun coding exercise when I got my first Mac Mini.' Never a product company - the rest of his output is hobby games and research code - which makes two decades of near-annual releases the standout maintenance signal in this catalog.
• Scale: past two million downloads by Sep 2020 (site milestones: 100k Apr 2008, 500k Apr 2011, 1M Sep 2014); still roughly 6.8k SourceForge downloads/week plus ~14.3k Homebrew installs in the last year; 31 SourceForge reviews, all 5-star.
• Distribution quirk worth crediting: the same app is free from SourceForge/Homebrew and $2.99 on the Mac App Store, a fee the site explains exists to cover developer-program costs; App Store updates deliberately lag SourceForge by weeks so store buyers get the shaken-out build.
• Kept pace with the platform across three CPU eras: PowerPC builds through Universal Binary (Feb 2007), Apple Silicon universal (Nov 2020), macOS 14 minimum for 3.8.x; legacy builds are still linked for macOS 10.5-13.
• Named prior art for the whole category: DaisyDisk's 2010 origin post lists GrandPerspective and Disk Inventory X as 'the only available applications of that kind for Mac users'; the 2026 wave positions against it directly (Radix's launch, treemap-disk-visualizer hunting 'GrandPerspective alternatives that don't cost money', DiskClue's alternative listings).

Sources

Established alternatives

• QDirStat
• godu
• Parallel Disk Usage
• CleanMyMac
• DaisyDisk

Related tools

• Bytescape
• ByteSweep
• DaisyDisk
• DiskScope
• Kudu

Wrong, stale, or missing something? Flag this listing: corrections reach the site operator, not GrandPerspective's developer. Last reviewed Nov 2, 2026.