WinDirScope Submission Details

Inspiration

WinDirStat is a legendary tool, but it feels frozen in time. In an era of terabyte SSDs and modern UI/UX, we felt users deserved a disk analyzer that wasn't just fast, but beautiful and safe . We set out to build a tool that makes storage management feel like navigating a galaxy rather than browsing a spreadsheet.

What it does

WinDirScope is a high-performance disk usage analyzer and storage cleanup suite.

• Lightning-Fast Scanning: Uses a custom parallel Rust engine to map your entire drive in seconds.
• Advanced Visualizations: Switch between a classic recursive Treemap and a futuristic 3D Force Graph "Galaxy View."
• Safe Cleanup: Delete files directly into the Windows Recycle Bin with a multi-layered safety engine that prevents you from touching critical system files (Windows, System32, root drives, etc.).
• Deletion Shopping Cart: A unique 3D workflow where you can "shop" for space—adding files to a queue in the 3D view and deleting them all at once.
• Duplicate Detection: A hybrid-hashing engine that finds identical binary clones across your drive to reclaim wasted space.

How we built it

• Full Stack: Built with Tauri , bridging a high-performance Rust backend with a modern React frontend.
• Graphics: Used Three.js and react-force-graph-3d to render the 3D storage galaxy.
• Native Integration: Leveraged the Windows Shell API (SHFileOperationW) to ensure deletions are recoverable via the Recycle Bin.
• Performance Hashing: Implemented xxhash (xxh3) for duplicate detection, using a tiered approach (Size check -> 4KB Partial Hash -> Full Binary Verification) to handle massive file sets without slowing down.

Challenges we ran into

• The "System32" Problem: Creating a deletion feature is easy; creating a safe one is hard. We had to build a 7-layer safety check to ensure users can't accidentally brick their OS.
• Tree Pruning: Updating a massive file tree in real-time after a deletion without triggering an expensive full-drive re-scan required complex in-memory tree manipulation in Rust.
• Merge Conflicts: Managing large-scale feature merges (like the Deletion Cart and Duplicate Finder) into a stable main branch while maintaining a clean git history.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Safety First: Our check_path_safety logic is robust, checking for system attributes, hardcoded blocklists, and relative path protections.
• 3D UX: The "Shopping Cart" in the 3D view makes the chore of deleting files actually feel like a game.
• Efficiency: The duplicate finder can process thousands of files by using smart filtering to avoid unnecessary disk I/O.

What we learned

• Memory Safety: Rust's ownership model was crucial for building a multi-threaded scanner that doesn't crash under the weight of millions of files.
• Tauri Architecture: We learned how to efficiently pass large datasets between the backend and frontend using optimized Tauri commands and state management.
• User Trust: When building a tool that deletes files, UI feedback (toasts, confirmation dialogs, and clear safety warnings) is just as important as the code itself.

What's next for WinDirScope

• AI-Assistant: Integrating an LLM to analyze file extensions and paths to suggest specific caches (NPM, Cargo, Adobe) that are safe to purge.
• Cross-Platform: Expanding our Windows-specific shell integrations to native macOS and Linux cleanup APIs.
• Cloud Integration: Adding modules to scan Google Drive or Dropbox to find duplicates and bloat in the cloud.

Built With

• cargo
• crossbeam
• css
• github
• html5
• javascript
• npm
• react
• rust
• shell
• tauri
• vite
• xxh3