How to Determine a Folder’s Size In Ubuntu and Linux

On a Unix-like operating system such as Ubuntu, you can use the du command, which stands for “disk usage,” to find out how much disk space a directory and its contents are taking up.

The following command will give you the total disk usage of a directory and its subdirectories in a human-readable format (i.e., bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes):

du -sh /path/to/directory

Here’s what the options mean:

• -s: Summarize and only provide a total for the directory specified.
• -h: Display the size in a “human-readable” format, showing sizes in KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), or GB (gigabytes) as appropriate.

Make sure to replace /path/to/directory with the path to the directory you’re interested in. The command will then output the total size of that directory and its contents.

For example, if you want to know the disk usage of the /var directory, you would use:

du -sh /var