Display folder sizes in Windows Explorer

I think Microsoft is worried that it will slow down folder views when DETAILS is the chosen setting.

Yes, I too have heard that as an explanation/excuse as well as something about slowness due to network shares, domain controllers, etc.

There are two problems with those explanations:

1.  It is not up to Microsoft to choose how users experience their systems. If a user wants to set the column to be always visible and always in details-mode and have lots of files and subdirectories, then that is their choice and it is incumbent on themselves to figure out what change they made to their system to make it slow and fix it, not Microsoft.

Besides, a user can choose to have every folder default to thumbnail-mode which also slows Windows down (potentially to a crawl), but I don’t see them removing that function. In fact, Vista added numerous additional columns that when enabled can slow down Windows like all the ones that read file contents/metadata.

2. Removing the IColumnProvider API doesn’t only affect Folder Size, it affects all third-party column shell-extensions, including ones that have no performance impact, so performance issues of Folder Size is obviously not the reason. (There are still ways to write other kinds of shell-extensions, so it is confusing why they chose to block only custom columns.)

Sadly, I don’t hold out hope of them listening to users and restoring the ability for shell-extension developers to add columns. If anything, they may specifically hold their ground out of stubbornness to avoid the embarrassment of confessing that they messed up.

Amen.  I think Microsoft is worried that it will slow down folder views when DETAILS is the chosen setting. 

In fact, Mac used to be able to do this (maybe it still can) but it would take many seconds for it to figure folder sizes.  You could see the sizes be updated in the SIZE column as the files were added up.  zzzzzzzzz   zzzzzzzzzz

If the desktop on a PC was set to return to the last view, and the last view had many folders in view, then it would take a long time to get your desktop back during a restart.  Something I think Microsoft is very, very careful about.  Eash operating system is touted as "quicker to open."  If they are counting folder sizes after boot time, then that just wouldn't be true if a lot of folders were open.

It was slow enough that you would leave that setting OFF unless you REALLY needed to know the folder size...which would be more than adequate for the casual user who needs to know folder sizes once in a while.

Well Microsoft, why not?

They could calculate folder sizes during shutdown, but that would also be hateful for most users.

For fork’s sake!

People, STOP posting third-party programs as solutions. There are plenty of standalone apps to show disk layout and usage, and it is not hard to find them. Also, using the Properties dialog or tooltips are not sufficient.

This thread is about showing the size of all FOLDERS in an EXPLORER column!

People have been using adding this function via third-party shell-extensions for a while now. Instead of building this functionality into Vista or 7 natively, they actually removed the ability for third-party extensions to provide it. WTF‽ Countless users have made themselves clear about their need for a proper Explorer size column that displays the size of folders, yet nothing has happened after several years. The only way that we can interpret this is that Microsoft does not care about it customers.