How to Search for Large Files in File Explorer?

Though most computers are using large capacity disks including SSD/HDD and external disks to store more data, all users will confront a problem: low disk space. No matter whether a C drive low space warning or disk space running out, you’ll always face one of these two issues.

Finding huge files on your Windows PC and deleting them if they're no longer relevant is a great method to swiftly free up memory space on your system. However, there are many files on your computer; how can you search for large files on your computer?

How to search for large files in Windows 10/11?

In fact, Windows provides many methods for locating all huge files saved on your disks. You can use system built-in tools to seek these large files, or you can download a PC cleaning software that will perform the job for you.

In any case, you'll find the files that consume a considerable portion of your memory space. It is up to you to determine what to deal with such files after they have been detected. If you don't want to remove them, or you're not sure whether they are needed in recent future, you can relocate them to the cloud or an external device.

1. How to search for large files in File Explorer?

File Explorer has various hidden functions that allow you to manage, classify, and search files on your computer. One of its features is to assist you in finding files of specified size on your computer. You may use this function to locate and remove big files from your computer. Don't forget to show the hidden files option before proceeding. This ensures that Explorer searches for huge hidden files in addition to conventional files.

When working with hidden files, please be careful, because most of the time, they are system and app-related files that, if deleted, would cause your programs to misbehave or possibly crash your entire system.

Step 1. Open the Start Menu and search for Show hidden and click on Show hidden files and folders.

Step 2. When the dialog box opens, click on the View tab at the top. You’ll see various options that you can modify.

Step 3. Find the option that says Show hidden files, folders, and drives and put a checkmark on it. Then click on the OK button to save your changes.

Now you can open “This PC” to search the large files.

Step 1. Open “This PC” on your PC to launch File Explorer. When the utility launches, click on the search box given at the top-right corner.

Step 2. Then a new menu item will be added to the top of the window. Click on the newly added item that says Search to view further options.

Step 3. Select the Size option and then select an appropriate option from the list. It’ll let you find large files available on your PC.

If the file you want isn't in the menu, type: size:>1GB. You need to change 1GB with any size in the search box and press Enter. It will only seek files that are larger than the size you specify. When the search results display, right-click anywhere on the page and choose Sort by, then Size, then Descending. This will ensure that the biggest file appears at the top of the results.

2. How to search and delete large files via PC clean tool?

As we mentioned before, although you can use File Explorer to search for large files, they are not the only options. Some third-party tools can make this work faster and easier, and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is one of them.

As a multifunctional disk and partition manager, AOMEI Partition Assistant supports Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP systems and there are 3 features for users to move or clean files, folders, and installed programs:

▶ App Mover: Users can use this feature to move installed apps to another location and the moved apps can run normally without reinstalling. All related data files will be moved. If you installed some large apps or games on the system drive/disk, this feature is quite useful.

▶ PC Cleaner: In this function, users can scan all PC and get rid of all junk files like caches, temp files, etc.

▶ Delete Large Files: This feature is designed for large data files that spread all around on your disk. After the scan, the tool will list all large files, you can choose which to delete and the software will mark the important files as red, so users can avoid wrong deleting.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, and then click "Free up" and "Delete Large Files".

Step 2. In the pop-up window, select the partitions that you want to find large files, and click "Start Scan" to scan for large files.

Step 3. When the scan is complete, all large files found are listed. Tick the files you want to delete, and then click the "Delete" button. You can also delete files marked in red if you’re sure they won’t hurt any programs or your system.

Step 4. This step will list all the files you have ticked to delete, click "Delete Now" after confirming that it is correct, then these files will be deleted successfully.

Then all unwanted large files will be cleaned from your PC. Please note that you can also recover lost data if you accidentally deleted.

Ending lines

If you don’t know how to search for large files in File Explorer, after reading this post, this won’t bother you anymore. In Windows 10, although Explorer or CMD can help you find large files, they can’t show all and you may miss some removable large files. However, with AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can easily and thoroughly remove unnecessary files or move large files & apps to a new location.

What’s more, this tool also allows users to “Merge Partition” and “Allocate Free Space” to extend system drive much more flexibly. And there’s the Server Edition for Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003 users.