The tree command on Windows has seen virtually no changes since it was released nearly 40 years ago. In today’s LLM era, as a tool that is very commonly used to describe project structure, the only two options—/f and /a—are clearly insufficient. It is also not particularly fast.
tree++ is a comprehensive upgrade to tree, bringing the following to the Windows tree command:
- An expanded parameter set, covering common features such as displaying file sizes, limiting recursion depth, changing output style, writing results to a file, and excluding specified directories (including honoring
.gitignore) - Better performance via a Rust implementation; additionally supports multithreading in batch mode, delivering a significant scanning speed improvement
- Achieves diff-level, bit-for-bit compatibility with the original Windows
treecommand in both parameters and output format, while also supporting Unix-style options (such as-fand--files).
tree++ is implemented in Rust and is open-sourced on GitHub.
Performance comparison (using C:\Windows as an example):
| Type | Time (ms) |
Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
tree /f (Windows Native) |
20721.90 |
1.00x |
treepp /f |
7467.99 |
2.77x |
treepp /f /nb |
7392.34 |
2.80x |
treepp /f /nb /b |
3226.38 |
6.42x |
treepp /f /nb /b /t 1 |
9123.00 |
2.27x |
treepp /f /nb /b /t 2 |
5767.71 |
3.59x |
treepp /f /nb /b /t 4 |
3948.73 |
5.25x |
treepp /f /nb /b /t 8 |
3166.81 |
6.54x |
treepp /f /nb /b /t 16 |
2704.67 |
7.66x |
Download tree++.zip from Release, extract it to a suitable directory, and add that directory to your environment variables.
Open Windows Terminal and run:
treepp /vYou should see output like:
tree++ version 0.5.0
A Much Better Windows tree Command.
author: WaterRun
link: https://github.com/Water-Run/treepp
Installation is now complete.
After that, you can use it the same way as the normal Windows tree command:
treepp /f| Option Set (Equivalent Forms) | Description |
|---|---|
--help -h /? |
Show help information |
--version -v /V |
Show version information |
--ascii -a /A |
Draw the tree using ASCII characters |
--files -f /F |
Show files |
--full-path -p /FP |
Show full paths |
--human-readable -H /HR |
Show file sizes in human-readable form |
--no-indent -i /NI |
Do not show tree connector lines |
--reverse -r /R |
Sort in reverse order |
--all -k /AL |
Show hidden files |
--size -s /S |
Show file size (bytes) |
--date -d /DT |
Show last modified date |
--exclude -I /X |
Exclude matching files |
--level -L /L |
Limit recursion depth |
--include -m /M |
Show only matching files |
--disk-usage -u /DU |
Show cumulative directory size |
--report -e /RP |
Show trailing summary statistics |
--no-win-banner -N /NB |
Hide the Windows-native tree banner output |
--silent -l /SI |
Silent terminal output (use with output) |
--output -o /O |
Output results to a file (.txt, .json, .yml, .toml) |
--batch -b /B |
Use batch mode |
--thread -t /T |
Number of scan threads (batch mode, default is 32) |
--gitignore -g /G |
Honor .gitignore |
--no-auto-exclude /NAE |
Disable default generated/cache directory exclusions |
For the full option set, see: tree++ Options Documentation