  Improving file management interfaces and optimising system performance
requires current data about users' digital collections and particularly about
the file size distributions of such collections. However, prior works have
examined only the sizes of system files and users' work files in varied
contexts, and there has been no such study since 2013; it therefore remains
unclear how today's file sizes are distributed, particularly personal files,
and further if distributions differ among the major operating systems or common
occupations. Here we examine such differences among 49 million files in 348
user collections. We find that the average file size has grown more than
ten-fold since the mid-2000s, though most files are still under 8 MB, and that
there are demographic and technological influences in the size distributions.
We discuss the implications for user interfaces, system optimisation, and PIM
research.
