Windows 7 Tip: Quickly Find the Folder Size in the Folder Tooltip in Windows Explorer

12

Here is a quick tip that can be very useful and handy.

To quickly find out how big the size of a particularly folder is, simply hover over your cursor over to it in Windows Explorer. A tooltip will popup which contains information of how big this folder is.

Explorer tooltip  1 thumb - Windows 7 Tip: Quickly Find the Folder Size in the Folder Tooltip in Windows Explorer

Yes, no more right click and properties. But here is a catch. The real calculation takes up to 3 seconds to calculate the total size under the selected folder. If the calculation hasn’t finished after 3 seconds, Explorer will just give up and reports the size as “larger than X” where X was the size it managed to calculate within that 3 seconds.

Explorer tooltip  2 thumb - Windows 7 Tip: Quickly Find the Folder Size in the Folder Tooltip in Windows Explorer

You probably will wonder such process will slow down the overall user experience, especially on a slower old machine. And yes, you can disable such behavior by  unchecking the box “Display file size information in folder tips” from Folder Options if the performance bothers you or such information doesn’t help you greatly.

explorer tooltip  3 thumb - Windows 7 Tip: Quickly Find the Folder Size in the Folder Tooltip in Windows Explorer

Hat tips to The Old New Thing for the inside info.

12 COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here