2021-02-25

Mac Finder still shows incorrect folder sizes

It's been two years, and the Mac Finder still shows incorrect folder sizes --- on macOS 10.15 Catalina.

A single screenshot shows how hilarious / sad this is:

 

The screenshot here shows the Finder thinking my "lol" folder is 17.92 GB.

But inside "lol" are two sub-directories: "magic", and "movs".  Finder thinks those two folders are zero KB.

Inside "movs" are a bunch of MP4 files that together are several hundred MBs.

Bring up the terminal to check, and du shows "lol" is actually 211 GB !!!

For the record, du is correct.  "magic" contains a lot more files.

Oh Apple... I can't recall classic Mac OS Finder, since the System 7 days, ever having this level of... mistake? incompetency? error?  If every time the Finder's Get Info window is open, it would just spin out a du sub-process to get the folder size, then it wouldn't get it this wrong.  But nope.

And for the record, I had to restart the Mac to get the folder size to show correctly.  Something with the Finder got really screwed up I guess.

This problem has been known for two years, since macOS 10.14.  See:

- 2019 February: Finder Shows Incorrect Folder Sizes --- on macOS 10.14

- 2020 February: What You See in the Finder Should Always Be Correct

- 2021 February: here we are...

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