Track the evolution of Disk Analyzer. All notable changes, fixes, and improvements.
v1.5.1
September 9, 2026
Fixed & Improved
Self-Contained Windows App SDK Runtime: Embedded the complete Windows App SDK native runtime directly into the application package (WindowsAppSDKSelfContained=true), preventing startup crashes (0xc000027b) on clean Windows installations without requiring external framework package provisioning.
Hardened Backdrop Initialization: Replaced declarative XAML MicaBackdrop with dynamic runtime initialization, providing graceful fallback for Windows 10, battery saver, and systems without hardware composition.
Top Files DataGrid Stability: Fixed division-by-zero layout cycles on unmeasured inactive tabs by giving the Name column fixed sizing and lazily binding the items collection on tab activation.
Synchronized Version Metadata: Updated internal version indicators, Help page "What's New (v1.5.1)" highlights, and fallback version strings across the suite.
v1.5.0
September 7, 2026
Added
Interactive Donut Chart: Added a dedicated Donut Chart tab in the Standalone App to visualize folder space distribution with responsive scaling, Fluent accent colors, center total size display, and tap-to-drill-down navigation.
Top 100 Largest Files Tab: Added a dedicated Top Files tab that multithreadedly scans the entire drive/root to surface the 100 largest files with early size pruning and root-level system files (pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys) support.
Large & Old Files Quick Filter: Added a one-click toolbar toggle filter button to instantly isolate files larger than 100 MB not modified in the last 12 months with a live match count badge.
Send to Recycle Bin: Added a right-click context menu option in the results grid to safely move files or folders to the Windows Recycle Bin with a confirmation dialog and dynamic list updates.
PowerToys Run Recent Scans (ds recent): Added a history mechanism to PowerToys Run storing the last 5 scanned paths for instant 1-click re-scanning.
Richer Result Subtitles: PowerToys Run query results now show both total size and formatted item counts (e.g. 42.3 GB · 15,823 items).
PowerToys Run Full Keyboard Navigation: Added complete keyboard accessibility to the floating GUI (Enter to drill down, Backspace to navigate up one level, and F5 to refresh/rescan).
PowerToys Run Collapsible Donut Panel: Added a toggleable side chart panel in the PowerToys Run GUI window featuring a high-contrast visual donut chart.
Live Theme Synchronization: Added dynamic system theme tracking (UserPreferenceChanged) to the PowerToys Run GUI, instantly switching between dark and light themes without requiring an app restart.
High-Contrast Usage Bars: Redesigned PowerToys Run mini usage progress bars using unicode contrast blocks (█ / ░) ensuring clear visibility across dark and light modes.
Command Palette Asynchronous Loading: Command Palette extension now streams and queries results asynchronously in the background, eliminating UI freezes and maintaining launcher responsiveness.
Enhanced Excel-Sortable CSV Export: Export formatted .csv files including unquoted numeric Size (Bytes) and Allocated Size (Bytes) columns with UTF-8 BOM encoding for direct numeric sorting and formula calculations in Microsoft Excel.
Fixed & Improved
Bar Chart Dynamic Scaling & Horizontal Scrolling: Fixed bar chart item clipping on smaller displays by adding horizontal scrolling and dynamic bar height scaling.
Drill-Down Tap Safety: Prevented aggregate "Other (N items)" summary bars from triggering invalid navigation while maintaining tap-to-drill-down on all named item slices and bars.
Clean Command Palette Provider Registration: Purged stale ghost provider cache entries for a clean single-entry settings experience.
Modernized Standalone Help Page: Fully refreshed Help and Features documentation detailing Donut Charts, Top Files, Old & Large filtering, Recycle Bin integration, and launcher commands.
v1.4.0
August 7, 2026
Added
Windows File Explorer Context Menu: Added "Analyze with DiskAnalyzer" right-click context menu item with official application icon for all directories, drives, and folder backgrounds.
Microsoft Store Rating Dialog: Integrated non-intrusive, professional WinUI 3 rating prompt after 3 completed scans.
Crisp Executable File Icon Extraction: Added native Win32 ExtractIconEx shell extraction for .exe and .dll files in the main DataGrid view.
Command Palette Top-Level Shortcuts: Restored all 3 explicit top-level Command Palette entries: (Command Palette), (Standalone App), and (PowerToys Run).
Dynamic CSV Export & Admin Elevation Resilience: Native comdlg32.dll save dialog fallback guarantees CSV export under Administrator elevation.
Live Item Count Status Bar: Real-time status bar displaying exact item counts (e.g. 212 items).
Interactive Visual Chart & "Other Items" Bar: Added Top 15 largest items visual chart with aggregate "Other (N items)" summary bar and direct tap-to-drill-down navigation.
Fixed & Improved
Scan Engine Performance & Resource Tuning: Capped parallel Degree of Parallelism (DOP) to half CPU cores to achieve a 50% CPU reduction and ~30% RAM footprint reduction, delivering 6.8% faster scans and an 87.0% lookup overhead reduction via O(1) dictionary extension category mapping.
Expanded DataGrid Name Column Width: Set default minimum width of 350px for the Name column so file names are never clipped by default.
Real-Time Live Search Filter: Fixed filter text box text-changed event handler for instant keyword and extension (*.mp4, *.exe) filtering.
PowerToys Run Plugin Sync: Resolved process locking issues during deployment so plugin.json updates cleanly to v1.4.0.
Security
Renewed Code Signing Certificate: Renewed signing certificate with Code Signing EKU and human-readable CN=ValleySoft name.
Build Security Hardening: Removed all hardcoded credentials and purged private key files from repository history.
v1.3.7
July 25, 2026
Fixed
Locked Drive Crash Fix: Resolved a bug where scanning or showing drive listings would crash the app if a drive was locked by BitLocker or had restricted access permissions.
Background Process Cleanup: Fixed an issue where the Command Palette extension remained running in the background after closing, ensuring it shuts down cleanly and saves system resources.
Windows Insider Compatibility: Added fallbacks and exception protections to prevent launch crashes for users running preview Windows 11 Insider builds (build 26300+).
Folder Icon Load Fix: Fixed a bug where folder and file icons occasionally failed to load or caused background crashes, ensuring icons load reliably on the main screen.
Clipboard Copy Protection: Fixed a random crash in PowerToys Run when copying file paths to the clipboard while another app had the clipboard locked.
Visual Theme Asset Fix: Fixed a packaging bug that caused light/dark mode icons and different scale sizes to be missing from installer builds.
About Page Layout Centering: Centered and resized the About page content so it looks clean, centered, and proportional on all window sizes (including maximized windows).
Insider Preview Warning Banner: Added a helpful informational banner at startup to warn Windows Insider users about potential pre-release compatibility issues.
Scanning Stability Improvement: Fixed a scanning race condition that caused occasional crashes when exploring complex directory structures.
Interface Lag & Freeze Mitigation: Offloaded heavy folder information lookups to background tasks and regulated progress bar updates to keep the main window smooth and responsive.
Clean Production Release: Stripped developer test paths and cleaned up file logging for a safer and more stable production install.
v1.3.6
July 18, 2026
Fixed
Uncategorized Crashes on Locked Drives: Fixed a bug where scanning the drives list would instantly crash the Command Palette extension if a drive was locked by BitLocker or otherwise inaccessible.
Background Quiesce Hangs: Fixed a major issue causing the Command Palette extension to stay alive in the background and refuse to suspend (HANG_QUIESCE).
Installer UI text: Fixed the installer displaying the wrong version and title in its UI.
v1.3.5
July 13, 2026
Added
Right-Click Context Menu: Right-click any row in the scan grid to instantly open in File Explorer or copy the file path.
Editable Address Bar: Double-click the breadcrumb trail to type or paste directory paths directly.
Command Palette Navigation: Keyboard navigation improvements including an "Up one level" shortcut and on-screen keyboard hints.
Fixed
Decoupled Installation Setup: Separated the PowerToys Run plugin (.exe) and standalone app installer (.msix) to prevent conflicts during manual installation.
Smooth Real-Time Scanning: Restored continuous progress updates in the scan grid.
Scan Crashes & Freezes: Solved random crashes when scanning complex directories, and moved drive information checks to background threads to prevent UI hangs.
Memory Leaks & Permissions: Cleaned up system resource handles to keep memory usage low, and removed unused permission capabilities.
Accessibility: Added proper screen-reader tags to navigation buttons.
v1.3.4 Store Only
June 30, 2026
Changed
Microsoft Store Compliance: Trimmed the restricted elevation capability (allowElevation) from the app package manifest to comply with strict Microsoft Store application policies.
v1.3.3
June 26, 2026
Added
Professional Help Page: Completely redesigned the Standalone App's Help & Features section using a native WinUI NavigationView for a premium, Windows 11 Settings-style experience.
About Page: Added a dedicated About page featuring the app version, copyright, and direct GitHub links.
New Icons: Updated the "View Help" menu icon to a professional Library icon.
Fixed
Admin Toggle Logic: Fixed a bug where the "Always Run as Administrator" toggle was incorrectly disabled and forced to appear checked while elevated.
v1.3.2 Store Only
June 25, 2026
Fixed
Store Submission Ingestion: Resolved ingestion validation errors and aligned package family name identifiers for standard MSIX packaging in the Windows App SDK.
v1.3.1
June 24, 2026
Added
"Always Run as Administrator" toggle added to the Standalone App's File menu. It saves your preference and natively relaunches the app via UAC.
Live UI Streaming: The Standalone App now populates folders incrementally in real-time as the scan progresses, similar to TreeSize Free.
Changed
Extreme Performance Optimization: Refactored the core scanning engine to eliminate blocking array allocations and bypass heavy P/Invoke and string operations.
Admin Integration: Restructured the app manifests so that elevated privileges are optional via the UI toggle instead of forcing UAC prompts on every launch.
v1.3.0
June 21, 2026
Added
Fully featured Standalone WinUI 3 App with a beautiful visual Bar Chart for deeper disk analysis!
Unified Installer features a flawless 1-click Clean Install mode, automatically purging old DLLs to prevent version conflicts.
Completely separated and distinct display names for the Standalone App, Command Palette Extension, and PowerToys Run plugin.
Unified the Command Palette Extension and Standalone App into a single MSIX package for seamless Microsoft Store distribution.
Changed
Upgraded the Core project and shared logic to .NET 10.0 for maximum performance.
Deeply cleaned the repository, permanently ignoring and removing old legacy build artifacts.
Fixed
PowerToys Run AssemblyLoadContext bug completely resolved! Core logic is now natively compiled directly into the plugin.
Standalone App sizes and calculations rigorously synced with Windows Explorer to ensure accurate byte-for-byte size reporting.
Fixed severe junction point infinite loop bugs in the directory scanner.
v1.2.0
June 14, 2026
Added
Native Command Palette MSIX Extension.
Async background scanning with live Scanning… placeholder.
Standalone GUI window (ds gui) with full drive/folder tree explorer.
ARM64 support — separate installer and MSIX for ARM64 devices.
Fixed
Disk used space calculation now perfectly matches Windows Explorer.
v1.1.0
June 10, 2026
Added
"Allocated on Disk" size metrics to scan results.
Parallel processing for deep directory scans to improve performance.
v1.0.2
May 24, 2026
Fixed
Mouse click on results removing the ds prefix.
Double ds appearing in search bar after selecting a result.
iCloud and OneDrive showing allocated size instead of actual size.
Folder sizes not fully recursive (capped at 1 level deep).
Missing string interpolations and prefixes in ChangeQuery calls.
v1.0.1
May 20, 2026
Fixed
Moved "Open in Explorer" shortcut to Ctrl+O context menu.
Fixed a bug where pressing Enter on a drive result opened File Explorer instead of starting a scan.
v1.0.0
May 15, 2026
Added
Initial release of DiskAnalyzer for PowerToys Run.