PWSH script to shink overgrown WSL and reclaim disk space. Finds all containers and removes free space made by autogrow. Warning: may kill your wsl! Close first pls.

shrink_wsl.ps1

# WSL VHDX Shrink Script
# This fancy lil script will save ur precious space cause microslop geniuses forgot that auto-growing disks need periodic compaction.

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

# Check if running as admin
$isAdmin = ([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal] [Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)
if (-not $isAdmin) {
    Write-Host "`n❌ Not running as Administrator. Come on, really?" -ForegroundColor Red
    Write-Host "Right-click and 'Run as Administrator' like a normal person.`n" -ForegroundColor Yellow
    exit 1
}

# Find all VHDX files in AppData
Write-Host "`n🔍 Searching for VHDX files..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "This might take a moment because AppData is a dumpster fire...`n" -ForegroundColor DarkGray

# Scan entire LOCALAPPDATA for VHDX files
$vhdxFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $env:LOCALAPPDATA -Filter "*.vhdx" -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force

if ($vhdxFiles.Count -eq 0) {
    Write-Host "❌ No VHDX files found. Do you even have WSL installed?" -ForegroundColor Red
    exit 1
}

Write-Host "✅ Found $($vhdxFiles.Count) VHDX file(s)`n" -ForegroundColor Green

# Build selection list with sizes
$vhdxList = @()
foreach ($file in $vhdxFiles) {
    $sizeGB = [math]::Round($file.Length / 1GB, 2)
    $vhdxList += @{
        Path = $file.FullName
        Name = $file.Name
        Directory = $file.DirectoryName
        SizeGB = $sizeGB
    }
}

# Add "Compact All" option
$vhdxList += @{
    Path = "ALL"
    Name = "Compact All VHDX Files"
    Directory = ""
    SizeGB = $vhdxList.Count
}

# Arrow key selection menu
$currentIndex = 0
$maxIndex = $vhdxList.Count - 1

function Show-Menu {
    param($index)
    Clear-Host
    Write-Host "`n📋 Select a VHDX file to shrink (Use ↑↓ arrows, Enter to select):" -ForegroundColor Yellow
    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
    
    for ($i = 0; $i -lt $vhdxList.Count; $i++) {
        $vhdx = $vhdxList[$i]
        $prefix = if ($i -eq $index) { "▶ " } else { "  " }
        $color = if ($i -eq $index) { "Green" } else { "White" }
        
        if ($vhdx.Path -eq "ALL") {
            Write-Host "$prefix💥 Compact All $($vhdx.SizeGB) VHDX Files" -ForegroundColor $color
        } else {
            Write-Host "$prefix💾 $($vhdx.Name) - $($vhdx.SizeGB) GB" -ForegroundColor $color
            if ($i -eq $index) {
                Write-Host "    📁 $($vhdx.Directory)" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
            }
        }
    }
    
    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
}

# Menu loop
while ($true) {
    Show-Menu -index $currentIndex
    
    $key = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")
    
    switch ($key.VirtualKeyCode) {
        38 { # Up arrow
            if ($currentIndex -gt 0) { $currentIndex-- }
        }
        40 { # Down arrow
            if ($currentIndex -lt $maxIndex) { $currentIndex++ }
        }
        13 { # Enter
            $selectedVHDX = $vhdxList[$currentIndex]
            break
        }
    }
    
    if ($key.VirtualKeyCode -eq 13) { break }
}

Clear-Host
if ($selectedVHDX.Path -eq "ALL") {
    Write-Host "`n💥 Selected: Compact All VHDX Files" -ForegroundColor Green
    Write-Host "📁 Count: $($selectedVHDX.SizeGB) files" -ForegroundColor White
} else {
    Write-Host "`n✅ Selected: $($selectedVHDX.Name)" -ForegroundColor Green
    Write-Host "📁 Path: $($selectedVHDX.Path)" -ForegroundColor White
    Write-Host "💾 Current size: $($selectedVHDX.SizeGB) GB`n" -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Step 1: Shutdown ALL WSL instances
Write-Host "⏹️  Shutting down all WSL instances..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
Write-Host "(If WSL is running, this will kill it. Save your work!)`n" -ForegroundColor Yellow

# Add confirmation prompt
Write-Host "❓ Are you sure you want to shut down all WSL instances?" -ForegroundColor Yellow
$confirmation = Read-Host "Type 'YES' to confirm, anything else to cancel"
if ($confirmation -ne "YES") {
    Write-Host "❌ Operation cancelled by user." -ForegroundColor Red
    exit 1
}

Start-Sleep -Seconds 2

try {
    wsl --shutdown
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 3
    Write-Host "✅ WSL shut down`n" -ForegroundColor Green
} catch {
    Write-Host "⚠️  WSL shutdown failed, but we'll try anyway..." -ForegroundColor Yellow
}

# Step 2: Optimize/Shrink VHDX
if ($selectedVHDX.Path -eq "ALL") {
    Write-Host "🗜️  Compacting ALL VHDX files..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
    Write-Host "This might take a while. Go touch grass or something.`n" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
    
    # Compact all VHDX files
    foreach ($vhdx in $vhdxList) {
        if ($vhdx.Path -ne "ALL") {
            Write-Host "Processing: $($vhdx.Name) - $($vhdx.SizeGB) GB" -ForegroundColor Yellow
            
            $diskpartScript = @"
select vdisk file="$($vhdx.Path)"
attach vdisk readonly
compact vdisk
detach vdisk
exit
"@
            
            $scriptPath = "$env:TEMP\diskpart_shrink_$(Get-Random).txt"
            $diskpartScript | Out-File -FilePath $scriptPath -Encoding ASCII
            
            try {
                $result = diskpart /s $scriptPath 2>&1
                
                # Check if diskpart actually succeeded
                if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) {
                    Write-Host "✅ $($vhdx.Name) compacted successfully!" -ForegroundColor Green
                } else {
                    Write-Host "❌ Failed to compact $($vhdx.Name)" -ForegroundColor Red
                    Write-Host "Output: $result" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
                }
            } catch {
                Write-Host "❌ Something went wrong with $($vhdx.Name): $_" -ForegroundColor Red
            } finally {
                Remove-Item $scriptPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
            }
        }
    }
} else {
    Write-Host "🗜️  Shrinking VHDX..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
    Write-Host "This might take a minute. Go touch grass or something.`n" -ForegroundColor DarkGray

    $vhdxPath = $selectedVHDX.Path

    $diskpartScript = @"
select vdisk file="$vhdxPath"
attach vdisk readonly
compact vdisk
detach vdisk
exit
"@

    $scriptPath = "$env:TEMP\diskpart_shrink_$(Get-Random).txt"
    $diskpartScript | Out-File -FilePath $scriptPath -Encoding ASCII

    try {
        $result = diskpart /s $scriptPath 2>&1
        
        # Check if diskpart actually succeeded
        if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) {
            Write-Host "✅ VHDX shrunk successfully!`n" -ForegroundColor Green
        } else {
            Write-Host "❌ Diskpart failed with exit code: $LASTEXITCODE" -ForegroundColor Red
            Write-Host "Output: $result" -ForegroundColor DarkGray
            throw "Diskpart operation failed"
        }
    } catch {
        Write-Host "❌ Something went wrong. The disk gods are angry." -ForegroundColor Red
        Write-Host "Error: $_" -ForegroundColor Red
        exit 1
    } finally {
        Remove-Item $scriptPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
}

# Show results
if ($selectedVHDX.Path -ne "ALL") {
    $sizeAfter = [math]::Round((Get-Item $vhdxPath).Length / 1GB, 2)
    $saved = [math]::Round($selectedVHDX.SizeGB - $sizeAfter, 2)

    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━" -ForegroundColor Green
    Write-Host "📊 RESULTS:" -ForegroundColor Cyan
    Write-Host "   Before: $($selectedVHDX.SizeGB) GB" -ForegroundColor White
    Write-Host "   After:  $sizeAfter GB" -ForegroundColor White
    if ($saved -gt 0) {
        Write-Host "   Saved:  $saved GB 🎉" -ForegroundColor Green
    } else {
        Write-Host "   Saved:  $saved GB (lol nothing)" -ForegroundColor Yellow
    }
    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━`n" -ForegroundColor Green
} else {
    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━" -ForegroundColor Green
    Write-Host "📊 RESULTS:" -ForegroundColor Cyan
    Write-Host "   Processed $($selectedVHDX.SizeGB) VHDX files" -ForegroundColor White
    Write-Host "   All files have been compacted" -ForegroundColor Green
    Write-Host "━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━`n" -ForegroundColor Green
}

Write-Host "✨ All done! Your disk is slightly less full.`n" -ForegroundColor Green