Freeing up space

SpaceKnife never deletes anything the moment you press a key. Everything you want gone goes into the delete basket first. The basket shows what it would free, checks what is in use or protected, and only then moves the items to the trash (the default) or deletes them permanently, both with a way back.

The context menu

Right-click any block: a file, a folder or a small-items block. The block is selected first, then the menu opens beside it, so every action applies to what you clicked. From the keyboard, press Shift+F10 or the Menu key for the selected block. The More actions button at the top of the details panel opens the same menu.

The header shows the full name, then size · file class · parent folder, and the item’s tag if it has one.

Item	Key	What it does
Open		Files open in their default app; folders open in the file manager.
Show in Explorer	Ctrl+E	Opens the parent folder with the item selected. On macOS Show in Finder, on Linux Show in file manager.
Open terminal here	Ctrl+`	Opens a terminal in the folder (for a file: its folder). Windows Terminal (wt.exe) on Windows, Terminal on macOS, x-terminal-emulator on Linux.
Copy path ▸	Ctrl+C copies As is	Four formats, each with a preview of the exact text (see below).
Add tag ▸	Ctrl+1–4, Ctrl+0	Red tag, Yellow tag, Green tag, Blue tag, Clear tag. See Tags and file classes.
Show only this (zoom in)	Enter	Zooms into the item, like a double-click. Not shown for the folder you are already zoomed into.
Rescan this folder		Reads the folder again with everything below it; for a file, its parent folder. See Live monitoring.
Add to delete basket	Delete	See the delete basket.
System menu…		Shown greyed out: not available in this version.

The keys in the table also work without the menu: they act on the selected block whenever the map has the focus (not while you type in the filter box, where Ctrl+C copies text as usual).

Items that don’t apply are greyed out, and hovering one tells you why. A small-items block is not a real location (“A small items block isn’t a real location.”), so the open, show, terminal and copy items are off, and it can’t be tagged. It can go into the basket. NTFS metadata and orphaned files from an MFT quick scan have no location on disk, so the file actions are off for them.

In the menu: ↑ / ↓ move (and wrap around), → or Enter opens a submenu, ← or Esc closes it, Enter runs the highlighted item, Esc closes the menu. Clicking elsewhere, resizing the window or switching to another window closes it too.

Copy path formats

The four formats are made by the backend, so they are the same in every front end.

Format	Windows	Linux / macOS
As is	C:\Users\lenny\Downloads\big file.iso	/home/lenny/My Videos/it's.mp4
Quoted	"C:\Users\lenny\Downloads\big file.iso"	'/home/lenny/My Videos/it'\''s.mp4'
POSIX path	/mnt/c/Users/lenny/Downloads/big file.iso	same as As is
file:// URI	file:///C:/Users/lenny/Downloads/big%20file.iso	file:///home/lenny/My%20Videos/it%27s.mp4

• Quoted on Linux and macOS uses single quotes, with each ' written as '\''. Inside single quotes the shell expands nothing ($, backticks, !), so the result pastes safely into any shell.
• POSIX path on Windows is the WSL form: drive letter in lower case under /mnt/. A network path \\nas\share\x becomes //nas/share/x.
• file:// URI follows RFC 8089: spaces, non-ASCII and reserved characters are percent-encoded as UTF-8. A network path becomes file://nas/share/x.

The delete basket

Adding items

• Delete on the selected block (on a Mac keyboard: fn+Delete).
• Add to delete basket in the context menu or in the details panel.
• Delete on a row of the filter’s results list: filter, then walk the list with ↓ and add what you want.
• Add to delete basket in the command palette.

Adding never asks and never touches the disk. A short message confirms it: “Added to the delete basket”, “Already in the delete basket”, or “Can’t delete: …” with the reason.

Small-items block. Right-click it and choose Add to delete basket: the basket gets one item, “{n} small items”, listed under its folder. It holds exactly the files in the block at that moment: not the larger files of the same folder that have blocks of their own, and not files that appear later. (The Delete key does not add small-items blocks: use the menu.)

Nesting is resolved for you.

• The same path never goes in twice.
• Adding a folder whose contents are already in the basket absorbs them into the folder’s item (“Added to the delete basket (3 items already in it were merged)”).
• Adding something inside a folder that is already in the basket adds nothing new.

The basket belongs to the app, not to a tab: items from several tabs can wait in it together. It is emptied when you quit SpaceKnife.

The drawer

The basket button at the right end of the toolbar shows the number of items. Click it (or run Open delete basket in the command palette) to open the drawer in place of the side panel; click it again or the × to close it. Opening and closing changes nothing in the basket.

• Can free: the total that deleting would free, in large type.
• Capacity bar of the volume with the most to free: used | in the basket | free. Below it a line such as “C:\ 182.4 GB free › 271.6 GB”, where the second number is the free space after deleting, and the volume’s total.
• To delete: the items, sorted By size, By name or By location. Each row shows the name, tag, folder, size and share of the basket, and a × that takes it out of the basket (nothing on disk changes).
• Total and a note about the trash: “Space moved to the trash is freed only when the trash is emptied.”, with what the volume’s trash holds now, or which volumes have no trash.
• The … button empties the basket. No files are deleted.

What counts as freeable

• Allocated size (the space on disk), not the logical size.
• Nested items are counted once.
• A file with several hard links frees space only when all its names are in the basket. Otherwise deleting one name frees nothing, and it counts as 0.
• Cloud placeholders (files that live only online) count as 0.
• Items that are in use still count: they free their space once the program lets go of them.

Items that can’t be deleted now

Some items stay in the basket with a warning line, and the drawer says “{n} items can’t be deleted now and will be skipped.”

Warning	Why
In use by {names}; quit it first	Another program holds the file open. Windows names the program (Restart Manager). Linux looks at the open files in /proc, only for processes you may inspect. macOS uses lsof. Checked when the item is added and again right before deleting.
No longer exists	The item was deleted or moved outside SpaceKnife.
Protected system location, can’t be deleted	See protected locations.

When files change on disk, the basket checks its items again about a second after things settle: sizes follow, and items that disappeared are marked.

Move to trash

Move to trash is the main button. It runs at once, without asking.

• A message shows the progress (“Moving to trash 1,204 / 18,406…”) with Stop. Stopping keeps what was done; the rest stays in the basket.
• At the end: “Moved {n} items to trash ({size})”. Items that failed stay in the basket with the reason; the log panel (Ctrl+J) lists them.
• Undo (5 s) puts everything back where it was, and back into the basket. An item whose original place is taken by a new file with the same name is not overwritten (“An item with the same name is at the original location; not overwritten”).

Moving to the trash never turns into a permanent deletion

When an item can’t go to the trash, SpaceKnife leaves it alone and tells you why. It stays in the basket, and only Delete permanently… can remove it. This happens with:

• network locations and removable disks, which have no trash;
• a volume whose trash is set to remove files immediately;
• an item too large for the trash (“Too large for the trash (…, the trash holds at most …)”) or with a path too long for it;
• on Linux, a file that can only reach a trash on another mount point. SpaceKnife follows the freedesktop.org trash specification and always moves by renaming, never by copying.

On Windows there is a second guard: if the system starts to delete an item instead of recycling it, SpaceKnife stops it before anything is touched (“The system was about to delete it instead of moving it to trash; blocked, nothing was changed”).

Note

The trash usually lives on the same volume, so moving to it frees nothing yet: free space stays the same and the trash folder grows. Empty the trash in your system to get the space back.

Delete permanently

Delete permanently… skips the trash.

1. A dialog asks “Delete {n} items ({size}) permanently?”: “They skip the trash and can’t be restored from it. You have 5 seconds to undo before it starts.” Cancel has the focus, so Enter cancels.
2. After you confirm, a countdown shows “{n} items will be deleted permanently” with Undo (5 s). Nothing is touched yet. Undo calls it off, and the items stay in the basket. Closing the message does not call it off.
3. Then the items are deleted, with progress and Stop. Stopping halfway through a folder can leave part of it deleted (“Canceled; part of it was already deleted”).
4. At the end the message shows what was freed: “Deleted {n} items permanently, {size} freed”.

Only one file operation runs at a time.

Right before deleting

Whichever way you delete, every item is checked once more right before it is touched: it must still exist, still not be protected, and not be in use. Items that fail a check are skipped and stay in the basket.

Afterwards the map follows: with live monitoring on, the changes arrive as file changes (blocks disappear, parents flash); with it off, SpaceKnife reads the affected parent folders again.

Protected locations

Some places can’t go into the basket at all. Adding one shows “Can’t delete: …” with the reason. “Itself” below means the folder can’t be deleted, but single items inside it can. Links in a path are resolved first, so a link that leads into a protected folder does not open a way around the list.

	Protected
Everywhere	The root of a volume. A folder where another volume is mounted. SpaceKnife’s own data folders and the folder of the running program.
Windows	C:\Windows and everything in it (except the contents of C:\Windows\Temp). Program Files, Program Files (x86) and ProgramData themselves. C:\Users itself, every home folder itself, and your AppData, AppData\Local, AppData\LocalLow, AppData\Roaming themselves. Recovery, Boot, EFI, $WinREAgent, bootmgr and BOOTNXT on the system drive. pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys, $Recycle.Bin and System Volume Information on any volume.
Linux	/bin, /boot, /dev, /etc, /lib, /lib32, /lib64, /libx32, /proc, /run (except what is inside /run/media, /run/user, /run/mount), /sbin, /sys, /usr, /efi and everything in them. The package databases in /var/lib/dpkg, /var/lib/rpm, /var/lib/dnf, /var/lib/pacman. /var, /var/lib, /var/log, /var/cache, /var/tmp, /tmp, /opt, /srv, /mnt, /media, /snap, /lost+found themselves. /home itself, every home folder itself, /root. Your ~/.config, ~/.local, ~/.local/share, ~/.local/state themselves. Trash folders.
macOS	/System, /bin, /sbin, /usr, /dev, /etc, /private/etc, /private/var/db, /private/var/vm, /Library/Apple, /cores and everything in them. /Applications, /System/Applications, /Library, /Volumes, /private, /private/var, /private/tmp, /var, /tmp, /opt themselves. /Users itself, every home folder itself. Your ~/Library, ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Mobile Documents, ~/.config, ~/.local, ~/.local/share, ~/.local/state themselves. ~/.Trash and .Trashes.

Tip

Trash folders are protected on purpose: “Trash folder: use the system’s “Empty trash” instead”.

Known folders

SpaceKnife has a built-in library of about 110 rules for well-known folders and files: what they are and whether they can be cleaned. Today you see it in snapshot comparisons: a changed item that matches a rule gets a short note after its name. Some examples:

Kind	Notes you may see
Virtual machines and containers	Docker data, WSL disk, Virtual machine, Emulator
Development	Dependency install (node_modules), Virtual environment, Package cache, Build cache, Toolchain, IDE cache
Browsers and apps	Browser cache, App cache, WeChat data, Telegram cache
Games	Steam library, Game update, Shader cache, Workshop
AI models	LLM models, Model cache
System	System update, System upgrade, Hibernation file, Virtual memory, System components, Restore points, Temporary files, Thumbnail cache, Crash dumps, System logs

A note says what something is, not that it is safe to delete. What SpaceKnife actually refuses to delete is the list of protected locations above.

Keys

Key	Action
Delete	Add the selected item to the delete basket
Shift+F10 / Menu	Context menu of the selected item
Ctrl+C	Copy the path (As is)
Ctrl+E	Show in Explorer / Finder / file manager
Ctrl+`	Open terminal here
Ctrl+1–4, Ctrl+0	Tag red, yellow, green, blue; clear the tag (without Ctrl too, while the map has the focus, unless switched off in the tag settings)
Enter	Zoom into the selected item
In the results list: Delete, Space, Enter	Add to the basket, show on the map, zoom in

On macOS, ⌘ works wherever Ctrl is listed. All keys are in Keyboard shortcuts.

Workflows

Big files nobody touched for a year. Press / and type >1gb;>1y (larger than 1 GB, modified more than a year ago). Click the first row of the results list, go down with ↓ and press Delete on what can go. Open the basket, sort By location, check, Move to trash.

Only the clutter of one folder. Zoom into the folder and right-click its small-items block. Add to delete basket takes exactly those files; the large files beside them stay.

Before and after. Save a snapshot before a big cleanup (command palette › Save snapshot, or Ctrl+S from 0.3.2). Afterwards, compare it with Now and switch to Decrease to see what really went.

Hand a path to a terminal. Select the item and use Copy path › Quoted for a shell, POSIX path for WSL, or press Ctrl+` to open a terminal right there.