Disk Analyzer and Cleaner Desktop App

Disk full always arrives at the worst moment — during a project submission or a software install — and the built-in OS tools answer with a single free-space number that explains nothing about where the space went. This project builds the tool that answers the real questions. The analyzer walks the drive bottom-up, accumulating per-folder sizes into a tree, and renders a squarified treemap where block areas are proportional to folder sizes — the 96 GB Videos folder is visibly enormous next to the 640 MB thumbnail cache. A largest-folders ranking gives the drill-down path with file counts. The junk engine applies documented category rules — Windows temp, browser caches, old installer packages, logs older than 30 days, thumbnail caches — each with a plain-language explanation of what it matches and why it is safe, while the Recycle Bin and update backups are parked for human review instead of auto-deleted.

1. The user picks a drive and runs Analyze; the walker accumulates per-folder sizes bottom-up into a size tree.
2. The treemap lays out the tree with proportional blocks; clicking a block drills into that folder.
3. The largest-folders ranking lists the top consumers with file counts for targeted investigation.
4. The junk engine applies its category rules and lists each category with matched size and a plain-language explanation.
5. The user selects categories and cleans; safe categories delete immediately while risky ones wait in the review queue.
6. A summary reports per-category reclaimed space, total cleaned, files removed and the before/after usage percentage.

Tech stack:

• Python or Electron with file-system APIs
• Squarified treemap layout implementation
• OS disk-usage APIs
• Desktop GUI toolkit
• Category rule engine for junk detection

• [Treemap visualization] A squarified treemap renders folder sizes as proportional blocks with click-to-drill-down into any folder.
• [Largest-folders ranking] Folders ranked by size with file counts and proportional usage bars for the drill-down path.
• [Categorized junk detection] Temp files, browser caches, old installers, thumbnail caches, logs older than 30 days and empty folders — each with byte counts.
• [Plain-language explanations] Every category states what it matches and why it is safe, so cleaning decisions are informed, not blind.
• [Review queue for risky items] The Recycle Bin and Windows update backups are listed for explicit approval and never auto-deleted.
• [Before/after reporting] Cleaning reports reclaimed bytes per category and the disk-usage percentage before and after.
• [System-folder protection] System-critical paths are categorically excluded from both analysis of deletable items and cleaning.
• [Drive overview dashboard] Used/free ring, total capacity and per-category cleanup cards with individual clean actions.

• Complete desktop app source code (analyzer, treemap, junk engine, cleaner UI)
• Analyzer documentation (size-tree walk, treemap layout, category rules)
• Sample drive profile for demonstration
• Setup guide (install, usage, safety notes)
• Project report PDF (background, visualization design, methodology)
• PPT presentation for final review
• Viva Q&A preparation document (file systems, treemap algorithms, safe-deletion design)

• Junk-category rules are heuristic and OS-version-sensitive; a rule that matches safely on one Windows build should be re-verified after major OS updates.
• The app cannot distinguish a temp file the user actually needs (rare but possible) from junk — categories are explained so the user decides.
• Cleaning browser caches logs the user out of websites; the category explanation states this before cleaning.
• Administrator rights are needed for some system cache paths; those paths are skipped by default rather than prompting for elevation.
• Network and external drives can be analyzed, but cleaning rules target local OS paths.