How To View Folder Size for Google Drive Folders

Google Drive is a fantastic place to store your files, with highly generous free plans and large storage capacity with the paid plans. It synchronizes files across devices and allows users to share and collaborate files. Google Drive is perfect for those who constantly work on the go, as the application is accessible on multiple devices and software.

How To View Folder Size for Google Drive Folders

Some of the pros of using Google drive include the following:

  • Auto Save: In Google Drive, all your work is automatically saved, so you won’t ever lose a piece of work again!
  • Device Compatibility: You can share files on different devices easily.
  • Offline Access: Despite being primarily an online workspace, users can still access their files even offline.
  • Sharing and Collaboration: Users can share files with other users online.

Although other players in the cloud storage marketplace exist, including OneDrive (Microsoft), Dropbox, and Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Drive is above the rest for the storage provided. Google Drives gives free 15 GB of personal/business file storage, with 2 TB business plans costing $12/month. Even additional storage plans are available when using Google One for people with immense storage needs.

Regardless of storage space limits, you may need to occasionally free some space up in your Google Drive account. Maybe you have a lot of personal videos and photos to store, or you may not be willing to pay a monthly subscription and want to stick to your 15 GB of free storage.

Regardless, when you need to get that storage organized and slimmed down, you’ll find that Google Drive is a bit feature-light in file management. Specifically, it’s impossible within the Google Drive web interface to determine each folder’s size. You can look at individual file sizes, but the folder’s total size is a complete mystery.

Nonetheless, getting a folder’s size information in Drive is possible. Let’s get started.

Quick Fix: How to View Big Files in Drive

If you’re looking for significantly sized files to clear out, a quick workaround will let you skip the rest of this article.

  1. Go to “Google Drive.”
  2. Click the “gear icon” in the upper right corner.
  3. Click “Settings.”
  4. Click “View items taking up storage.”

Google Drive will then display a list of every file in your cloud, automatically sorted by file size. You can then decide whether to keep those big files, save them somewhere else, or delete them.

Download the Drive Folder to View Its Size

The brute-force approach is simple: download the Google Drive folder to your local hard drive. From the downloaded folder, you can view storage size details for the downloaded folder in File Explorer, then delete the whole folder when it is no longer needed.

To download a Google Drive folder, follow these steps:

  1. Click “My Drive” on the left of the Google Drive page to expand a list of folders.
  2. Right-click a folder and select “Download” to save a copy to your hard drive.
  3. A “Preparing download” bar opens, showing it zipping the file. It will let you know when it is ready to download, and the folder’s ZIP file will save to your browser’s default download folder.
  4. Unzip the downloaded Google Drive folder in “File Explorer.” Select a “destination path” for the extracted folder, and press the “Extract” button.
  5. Right-click the extracted folder in File Explorer and select “Properties.” The “General tab” includes folder size details. You can right-click the folder if you’re finished and select “Delete.”

Add the Backup and Sync app to view Drive Folder Size

Backup and Sync is an app that syncs Google Drive cloud storage with your hard disk. It displays all your Google Drive files and folders in File Explorer. You can view each Google Drive folder and file size there.

To add Backup and Sync to Windows, click the “Download” button here. That will save the software’s installer to your hard drive. Open the software’s installer to add Backup and Sync to Windows. The installer will walk you through three steps to get you set up.

  1. Go to “Google Drive” in a browser and sign in to the corresponding “Google Account” if needed.
  2. In the selection window that appears, choose the folders you want to sync by clicking “Choose Folder.” To skip this step and sync every folder and file, press “Next.”
  3. The “Sync My Drive to this computer” option gets selected by default, but you can specify the preferred location by clicking “Path.”
  4. If you chose “Path” in the above options, select “Sync only these folders…” to display a list of all the folders in your Google Drive.
  5. The folder size gets displayed next to each one. View the sizes and quit the wizard. Otherwise, press “Start” to begin syncing Google Drive to get all folder and file sizes on your PC.
  6. File Explorer now includes a Google Drive folder, which you can open by clicking “Quick access > Google Drive” and then review a folder’s size by hovering the cursor over it.

Want more room on your Google Drive? Check out this tutorial on how to free up Google Drive space.

19 thoughts on “How To View Folder Size for Google Drive Folders”

Cher says:
This is an old thread, however I thought I would still share — I was struggling with the same issue of trying to view folder sizes in order to manage files on my Google Drive, which is way larger in data than I have space for on my laptop, therefor downloading all the files just to see folder size is not an option for me. However, I downloaded the new (new-to-me) Google Drive for Desktop app, and they have an option to “Stream” vs “Mirror” the files on your Google Drive. Selecting “Stream” in the Preferences, and then opening Google Drive in your Finder, allows you to see & calculate all folder sizes on your Drive, without having to download any files. Game-changer!
Nermin Hashem says:
thank you so much really!
Dan says:
People, this function is available in the most basic operating systems. So why not on gdrive? This is because this feature would allow better management of your files and storage space. Google doesn’t want that as everyone would just downgrade their plans or buy just the right size. It’s a business decision rather than capability issues.
Dan R says:
Even simpler . . . the “rclone” command-line tool will show you the folder sizes for Google Drive (and any of its other supported backend systems). No need to make any copies or backups, works on Windows / Mac / Linux
Tanzeel says:
Definite workaround. Open your Google Drive in Backup and Sync from Google and then check preferences > Google Drive. You will be able to see the folder size beside the folder name
Yon says:
Great thanks 🙂
Jesús Z says:
Thank you 😀
Paul Kuck says:
Workaround – Move said folders to Dropbox > Right Click > Select Check folder Size. Boom! Issue with this is that you can be sure every file was moved over, but it’s a high level check.
tush says:
use Air explorer or rclone
IanS says:
Google Drive app says I am using 88% of my 15GB allowance, but the properties of the Google Drive folder in File Explorer show less than 3GB. The Storage/File Size option in settings shows lots of small files, but none of any size. So what is taking up over 10GB of storage? Mystery!
Riley says:
I have the same problem as well. I’m going to investigate this; currently purging old files on my drive but I feel like there may be some hidden files not accessible through the google drive site.
PaulS says:
H both,

Have you emptied your google drive bin? The files in there count towards your allowance until they’re purged.

Mirko says:
Dear all , the following is a workaround , yet works well for me :
– Have ‘Google Backup and Sync’ installed to your PC!
– Right-mouse-button click on the cloud icon of Google Backup and Sync!
– Left-mouse-button click on the ‘Settings’ icon (three vertical bullet points)!
– Left-mouse-button click on the ‘Settings’ menu entry in the menu that came up!
– Left-mouse-button click on the the ‘Google Drive’ menu entry in the popup window that came up!
– It will take some time, yet you’ll eventually see a file-tree of your Google Drive folders including their sizes. You can navigate around in the tree and open subfolders. You do not have to actually copy (sync) the files to your local storage.
Voila and cheers, Mirko
GuyFrancon says:
Great idea you shared, Mirko! Worked like a charm, and didn’t have to download any files.
Krunal says:
Thanks man, you saved my day, calculated total of 1TB in a sec, wasted 3 days doing this with filestream. May God bless you
antiGoogle says:
And when I downloaded a 5GB file I split it into 5 files of 1GB. I did NOT realize and only accepted the download of one of them. The others thought they were repeated downloads. Then, I deleted the file from the cloud and emptied the trash. Now I lost the files definitely.

Thanks Google.

Chris says:
Even as a paying customer on the £7.99 a month for 2TB storage i am unable to do this and check folder sizes!
I was only using about 400GB until recently, when i requested a copy of my Google Account data, and it would be delivered to my Google Drive.
This made a folder caled Takeout which is filled with up to 4GB zip files, but they aren’t all the same size, you don’t see how many there are until you scroll all the way to the bottom of a page which refreshes as you reach the bottom, and there is too much data for me to try using the Windows desktop Back and Sync software to get a local copy of it as i only have a 1TB SSD.
It’s truly remarkable that such a simple thing is not available!
kai says:
same issue
Makenna says:
Seriously.

The only way to check if someone else has gotten all the contents of a 27 GB folder is for me to download the entire 27 GB folder?

On my internet that would take at least a day…

Werner Barnard says:
Haha a day.. on mine a week, guess Windows does not take 3rd world countries into consideration, they think the whole world has their 100mbps speeds
Werner Barnard says:
Google..not Windows
Travis Scott says:
How the hell does a company like google not implement the ability to see the size of folders? I think my brain is going to explode.
Luthien says:
They want you to buy Google One. It’s easier to make you do that if you can’t figure out which folders you need to delete.
Frankie says:
Pretty sure Google doesn’t want you to know how big your folder is such that when you ran out of space you will need to upgrade your storage plan. I am already subscribing to a 15Gb plan.

Took me so long to shrink my Google Storage without the file size.

John says:
Really disappointing from Google. I purchased a storage package before realizing i could not view the storage size of folders and back ups.
Sonoman says:
Sucks big time! Just purchased yesterday… I’ll revoke it at the end of the month and maybe move to Mega that has lots and lots of cool features… Including the utter complex “Folder Size”….. ggggggrrrrrr google!
Mark S says:
This has got to be the biggest oversight in Google Drive.
1. I don’t need GD to count files in a folder with 4 items. I’m concerned with the dozens and hundreds of files in folders. So I have to wait for GD to process 750 files before it can tell me I have 750 files in a folder??? Asinine.
2. The most common need for counting files is to verify whether the cloud has all the files that are synced to or from my hard drive. So counting the files on the hard drive is pointless.

How difficult is it to display the number of items in a folder or the number of items selected???? This is just stupid, lazy development that is out of touch with the actual users – a trend Google doesn’t have the market on (I’m accusing you, too, Microsoft).

Randolph Price says:
Once again Google falls short of UI requirements for maximum efficiency. And the minute you count on the functionality of the google app, it will be discontinued leaving you to scramble for another alternate program.
DimanNe says:
Now you can go to Settings (gear icon) ->General -> Storage -> View items taking up storage
Rostyslav Gudz says:
but no folders size though
Kolin says:
When I try to use this I get this message:
Sign in with Google temporarily disabled for this app
This app has not been verified yet by Google in order to use Google Sign In.

Is there any way to get past this?

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