What Does This Icon Mean


I have seen this little blue circle, which looks something like a wave in motion, in version after version of DO and it's just moved to the upper right corner in Version 11.

But I've always wondered what it means. It's constantly spinning and never stops. I did read about accessing the internet at various time but then shouldn't it stop at least occasionally? If that is what it's telling me how can I find out what is causing this constant connecting?

Thanks

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It means something is happening in the background.

If you hover over it or click on it, it may tell you more (depending on what the operation is; not all do).

It says it's querying file and folder information. Shouldn't that stop at some point? In comparison to your browser if it were to keep spinning you'd think there was a problem loading or contacting a particular server. I think because the icon is similar to what's shown in the browser it seems like there's some task that's not able to complete. Is there a compelling reason to show it if it never stops as it makes it seem like it's eating up system resources?

It does normally stop. If it literally never stops for you it means something is wrong. Can you show a screenshot of the full Lister?

Here's the lister from my Desktop. I can't quite figure out what makes the circle go. I can move to a new drive and I would think it would come on and count or whatever it's doing but it might not even come on. I put it on the system drive c: to see what would happen so far it's been spinning. I would like to do this on my laptop but the dark theme doesn't seem to have the spinner. How do I get back to the default theme? There's nothing listed but the dark theme if I open theme settings. If I got to my desktop where I've never installed another theme there's nothing under that theme selection and I can't find a *.dlt on either machine except the two dark themes on my laptop.

The first time I went to the c drive on my desktop it spun for quite a bit and then I tried playing around looking at different size folders to see how it would react and like I said above there doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern. I went back to c after I played around a bit and left it there while I was writing this. I just checked it and somewhere within 5 minutes, it stopped. Does it save its work so it doesn't start over every time? It seemed like the first time I went to the c drive it ran longer but I didn't think about timing it.

It looks like you have automatic folder size calculation turned on, which can take a while in the root of a large drive like C:\, and will cause the spinner to appear while it's working.

It's usually better to only turn it on for specific folders where you need it, and know it won't take too long (e.g. a Downloads folder where you remove things after downloading them is a good example). In other folders, calculating it on demand only when you need the information (Edit > Calculate Folder Sizes) is usually a better idea.

Good to know.

I just had it run through 1.2tb of data today it took about 45 minutes. It might have been slightly less but without just sitting and watching it there's no exact what to know. I was trying to check it each time I completed a task.