tree++: A Much Better Windows tree Command

February 6, 2026 · View on GitHub

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 tree command in both 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)	`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`

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 0.4.0

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
`--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 8)
`--gitignore` `-g` `/G`	Honor `.gitignore`

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