Find empty directories

Script 2 min read Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7

Written and tested by Dhrub Bharali · Updated 02 October 2026

Find empty folders with Get-ChildItem and Where-Object. Count hidden and system entries when deciding whether a directory is empty.

The script

1PS> $Root = "C:\Data"

2PS> Get-ChildItem $Root -Directory -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object { -not (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) } | Select-Object FullName

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$Root = "C:\Data"
Get-ChildItem $Root -Directory -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object { -not (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) } | Select-Object FullName

Inspection only — no command has run.

Show reference output

1 FullName

2 --------

3 C:\Sample\item.txt

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$Root = "C:\Data"
Get-ChildItem $Root -Directory -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object { -not (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) } | Select-Object FullName

Stage 1$RootPositional values or no named parameters
Stage 2Where-ObjectPositional values or no named parameters
Stage 3Select-ObjectPositional values or no named parameters

How it works

The outer Get-ChildItem walks $Root for directories only. For each one, the Where-Object script block runs a second Get-ChildItem against its FullName with -Force so hidden and system entries still count, and the directory passes through only when that inner call returns nothing.

Adapting it

Removing -Force from the inner call treats folders containing only hidden files as empty, which matches what most migration tools assume and will lengthen the result list considerably.

If the result is unexpected

Directories that look empty in Explorer are not returned, or the scan takes far longer than the size of the tree suggests it should.

The inner test uses -Force, so hidden and system files count as contents and a folder holding nothing but a desktop.ini is reported as populated. Nested empty directories count as contents too, which excludes their parents. Every directory triggers its own child enumeration, so total work scales with folder count rather than file count.

Inspect the suspect folder with Get-ChildItem -Force to see what the test is actually finding in it.
Drop -Force if hidden metadata should not count, then compare the new result count against the old one.
Run the scan repeatedly until it returns nothing, since removing leaves turns their parents into new candidates.
Add -Depth to bound the recursion when the tree is deeper than anyone expected.
Watch for reparse points, because following a junction can send the walk somewhere unrelated or into a loop.

Validate the result

A folder you know contains only hidden metadata appears in the output once -Force is removed, and a second pass after cleanup surfaces no new candidates.

Keep the check reliable

Decide up front whether hidden files count as contents and record that choice in the script, because the two behaviors produce very different lists.

Primary documentation

Get-ChildItem reference

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