How to Check Available Disk Space Using GUI and Terminal in Ubuntu

Whether you are downloading large application packages, running virtual machines, or backing up personal media, monitoring your available storage on Ubuntu is essential to keep your system performing smoothly. Running out of root filesystem space can prevent package updates from installing, corrupt local databases, or cause the graphical desktop to fail during login. Ubuntu provides both visual graphical tools and quick terminal utilities to inspect free drive capacity and pinpoint large storage hogs.

Method 1: Check Disk Space Graphically via Disk Usage Analyser (Baobab)

Ubuntu includes a visual disk inspection utility called Disk Usage Analyser that maps out drive consumption in clear visual charts:

1. Press the Super key (Windows key) or click Show Applications at the bottom-left corner of your desktop.
2. Type Disk Usage Analyser into the search bar and launch the application.
3. The home screen displays all connected physical drives, internal partitions, and external USB storage devices with their total size, used space, and free capacity.
4. Click on your primary Computer or Home folder partition to scan it.
5. The analyser displays an interactive ring chart (or treemap). Larger folders take up wider wedges.
6. Click through the rings or expand folders in the left-hand column to easily identify bloated cache directories, orphaned downloads, or forgotten video files.

Method 2: Use the Disks Utility for Hardware Partition Overviews

If you want to view low-level partition layouts, swap space, and filesystem types:

1. Open the Show Applications menu and search for Disks (gnome-disks).
2. Select your physical drive from the left sidebar.
3. The visual volume diagram shows partition boundaries, file formats (ext4, FAT32, NTFS), mount points, and remaining free space.

Method 3: Check Free Space Using the df Terminal Command

The command line is the quickest way to inspect filesystem capacity across all mount points:

1. Open the Terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T.
2. Run the df command with the human-readable flag:

   df -h

3. Examine the output columns:
   • Filesystem: The partition device name.
   • Size: Total partition capacity.
   • Used: Current space consumed.
   • Avail: Space remaining for new files.
   • Use%: Percentage of space consumed.
   • Mounted on: The directory where the drive is attached. Look for / (root partition) and /home.
4. To filter out virtual snap packages and temporary RAM mounts, run:

   df -h --exclude-type=tmpfs --exclude-type=squashfs

Method 4: Measure Folder Sizes with the du Command

To identify which specific subdirectories inside your home folder are taking up the most space, run:

du -sh ~/Downloads ~/Documents ~/Videos

This prints clean human-readable gigabyte tallies for your primary folders, helping you decide what to clean or archive.