tree++: A Much Better Windows tree Command

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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
• Full compatibility with the original Windows tree command’s parameters and output format, while also supporting Unix-style options (such as -f and --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)	34367.81	1.00x
treepp /f	8948.63	3.84x
treepp /f /nb	8690.36	3.95x
treepp /f /nb /b	3816.34	9.01x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 1	10672.62	3.22x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 2	6769.22	5.08x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 4	4717.16	7.29x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 8	3797.09	9.05x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 16	3026.32	11.36x
treepp /f /nb /b /t 32	3013.44	11.40x

Installation

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 /v

You should see output like:

tree++ version 0.1.0

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

Quick Reference

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
--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
--prune -P /P	Prune empty directories
--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 8)
--gitignore -g /G	Honor .gitignore

For the full option set, see: tree++ Options Documentation