For fifteen years it was the answer to "what is filling my Mac." The
last official release was version 1.3 in December 2019, it targets
macOS 10.13 through 10.15, and on Apple Silicon it needs Rosetta.
Here is what to use instead, including the free options.
Nothing dramatic. Tjark Derlien wrote a good, free treemap tool, shipped
it for years, and stopped. Version 1.3 landed in December 2019 and the
official downloads page still lists it as current. That was two
architectures and seven macOS releases ago.
The practical problems are the ones you would expect from a Carbon-era
Intel binary. It runs under Rosetta on Apple Silicon rather than
natively, so it is slower than it should be on the hardware most people
now own. Homebrew has scheduled its cask for disabling. And, most
importantly for what the tool is actually for, it predates APFS
becoming the norm and counts bytes the old way, which means the numbers
it shows you can be badly wrong on a modern Mac.
There is also a community revival, published as Disk Inventory X rebuilt
for modern Macs. It is not the original author's release. If you go that
route, know what you are installing and where it came from.
02 The alternatives, honestly
Three of these are worth your time, and one of them is ours. We will be
clear about which.
Delve
GrandPerspective
Disk Inventory X
Price
$4.99 once (14-day trial)
Free, open source
Free
Latest release
2026, actively developed
v3.7.2, 2026
v1.3, December 2019
Apple Silicon
Native, required
Native
Rosetta only
Visualization
Cushioned treemap, GPU
Treemap, CPU
Treemap, CPU
APFS clone & hardlink accounting
Yes
No
No
iCloud dataless files marked
Yes
No
No
Runs on Intel / older macOS
No, macOS 26 and Apple Silicon
Yes
Yes, 10.13 to 10.15
Open source
No
Yes, GPL
Yes
Facts as of August 2026. Delve is $4.99, a one-time purchase with a
14-day free trial and free updates: see the
pricing page. If anything here is out of
date, tell us at support@khaosstudio.com.
03 If you want free, take GrandPerspective
We are not going to talk you out of a free tool that works.
GrandPerspective is the
closest thing to a direct successor: same idea, same treemap, free,
open source under the GPL, and genuinely still maintained, with v3.7.2
shipping in 2026. It runs natively on Apple Silicon and it also runs on
Intel and older macOS, which Delve does not.
What it does not do is APFS accounting. It sums logical sizes the same
way Disk Inventory X did, so on a Mac full of clones, Xcode support
folders, and iCloud placeholders it will overstate what deleting
something actually gets you back. For a lot of people that does not
matter. If it does not matter to you, install GrandPerspective and stop
reading.
OmniDiskSweeper is the other
free option, from The Omni Group. No treemap at all, just a sorted list
of your biggest folders. Less pretty, occasionally faster to act on.
04 What Delve does differently
Delve is the modern rebuild of the idea Disk Inventory X had. Same
cushioned treemap, written from scratch in Swift with a Metal renderer,
and built around the thing every pre-APFS tool gets wrong: it reports
the bytes you actually reclaim. Clones and hardlinks are counted once,
not once per copy. iCloud dataless files are marked so a 4 GB
placeholder does not masquerade as 4 GB of local storage. A
1 TB volume scans in well under two minutes on a base M2, and
the map stays at 60 Hz while you drill through millions of tiles.
The trade is real and we would rather state it: Delve requires macOS 26
and Apple Silicon, it is not open source, and it does not scan cloud
accounts or network shares. If you are on an Intel Mac, it is not for
you and GrandPerspective is.
The honest take
If you liked Disk Inventory X and you are on a modern Mac, Delve is
the same idea rebuilt for the filesystem you actually have, at
$4.99 once with a 14-day free trial.
If free matters more than accurate byte counts, GrandPerspective is
the better answer and we will say so plainly.
05 Common questions
Does Disk Inventory X still work in 2026?
It launches for many people, but it is version 1.3 from December
2019, targets macOS 10.13 to 10.15, and runs under Rosetta on
Apple Silicon rather than natively. It also predates widespread
APFS use, so the folder sizes it reports can be significantly
wrong on a modern Mac.
What is the best free Disk Inventory X alternative?
GrandPerspective. It is free, open source under the GPL, actively
maintained with v3.7.2 in 2026, runs natively on Apple Silicon
and Intel, and draws the same kind of treemap. It does not do
APFS clone accounting.
Is Disk Inventory X safe to use?
The original from derlien.com is a long-trusted piece of
software, but it is unmaintained and unsigned for current macOS
conventions, so Gatekeeper will complain. Be more careful with
third-party rebuilds and aggregator downloads, which are not the
original author's releases.
Why does Disk Inventory X show the wrong folder sizes?
It sums logical file sizes, which is what every disk tool did
before APFS. On APFS, cloned files share their blocks, so the sum
of file lengths can be many times the space actually occupied.
Deleting a folder it reports as 87 GB may free only 12 GB.
Is there a Disk Inventory X for Apple Silicon?
Not from the original author. A community revival exists, and
Delve and GrandPerspective are both native Apple Silicon treemaps
that are actively developed.
∞ Try Delve
Fourteen days, every feature unlocked, no card and no account to start.
If it earns a place on your Mac, it is $4.99 once and yours for good.