File Details (I Key)

Press I to open a scrollable dialog with detailed information about files and directories.

Usage

• I — show details
  • If files are selected, shows details for every selected item
  • If nothing is selected, shows details for the item under the cursor
• ↑/↓ — scroll line by line
• Page Up/Down — scroll by page
• Home/End — jump to top/bottom
• Q or ESC — close

Information shown

Files

• Name and full path
• Type — File / Directory / Symbolic Link / Special
• Size — human-readable (B, KB, MB, GB)
• Timestamps — last modified and last accessed
• Permissions — Unix-style rwxrwxrwx, plus owner and group
• Symlink target — for symbolic links

Directories

Directories show the same fields, plus a recursive total and a contents count:

• Total size — how many bytes everything inside adds up to, shown human-readable and in exact bytes
• On disk — how much space it actually takes up on the drive
• Contents — how many files and folders it contains, recursively

These are counted in the background after the dialog opens: the dialog appears instantly and the numbers climb until the count finishes, so a large (or remote) directory never blocks the UI. While counting, the row is marked scanning…; if some subdirectories could not be read, the result notes how many were unreadable. Closing the dialog stops the counting.

Symbolic links are counted as single entries and never followed, so a link pointing back into the same tree cannot inflate the total.

When multiple items are selected, the summary at the top shows the live Total size, On disk and Total items (files and folders) across the whole selection, including everything inside selected directories.

Why there are two size rows

They are the same two numbers Finder shows as Size and on disk, and for most folders they differ only by rounding — every file takes up a whole number of blocks. They come apart when a folder holds something stored compactly:

• a sparse file, which is mostly empty space that was never written — a virtual machine disk image is the usual case, and can be a terabyte long while taking up twenty gigabytes
• a compressed file, which macOS stores smaller than its contents
• a cloned copy, which shares its storage with the original until one of them changes

For a folder like ~/Library/Containers, holding a Docker disk image, Total size can read close to a terabyte while On disk reads a few dozen gigabytes. Both are true; the second is the one that tells you what you get back by deleting it.

On disk is shown only where it can be measured: local drives on macOS and Linux. It is left out for Windows paths, for SSH and S3 connections, and for files inside an archive, none of which report the figure — rather than showing a number that would be a guess.

Example:

┌─────────────── Details: filename.txt ───────────────┐
│ File: filename.txt                                   │
│ Path: /home/user/documents/filename.txt              │
│ Type: File                                           │
│ Size: 1.2 MB                                          │
│ Modified: 2024-03-15 14:30:22                        │
│ Accessed: 2024-03-15 16:45:10                        │
│ Permissions: -rw-r--r--                              │
│ Owner: user:staff                                    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

When multiple items are selected, each one’s details are listed in turn, separated by dividers.

Notes

• Permission and access errors are handled gracefully: unreadable symlink targets show as <unreadable>, and inaccessible directories show <permission denied> rather than failing.
• On Windows, owner/group fall back to numeric UID/GID.
• Works the same in both panes, and can inspect the results of a search or a multi-file selection (select with Space or A first).