How do I determine the total size of a directory (folder) from the command line?

Is there a simple command to display the total aggregate size (disk usage) of all files in a directory (folder)?

I have tried these, and they don't do what I want:

• ls -l, which only displays the size of the individual files in a directory, nor
• df -h, which only displays the free and used space on my disks.

The command du "summarizes disk usage of each FILE, recursively for directories," e.g.,

du -hs /path/to/directory

• -h is to get the numbers "human readable", e.g. get 140M instead of 143260 (size in KBytes)
• -s is for summary (otherwise you'll get not only the size of the folder but also for everything in the folder separately)

As you're using -h you can sort the human readable values using

du -h | sort -h

The -h flag on sort will consider "Human Readable" size values.

If want to avoid recursively listing all files and directories, you can supply the --max-depth parameter to limit how many items are displayed. Most commonly, --max-depth=1

du -h --max-depth=1 /path/to/directory

Recently I found a great, ncurses based interactive tool, that quickly gives you an overview about directory sizes. Searched for that kind of tool for years.

• quickly drilldown through file hierarchy
• you can delete e.g. huge temporary files from inside the tool
• extremely fast

Think of it as baobab for the command line:

apt-get install ncdu

This finds the size recursively and puts it next to each folder name, along with total size at the bottom, all in the human format

du -hsc *

Enjoy!

du foldername

More information on that command here