Has something new come along? It’s been so long since I’ve needed to do this that I assume CCleaner has enshittified by now.
Absolutely not. It was sold to a third party with nebulous privacy policy among other annoyances. Get you some Bleachbit.
Awesome I’ll look into that one. Thanks!
Be very careful with Bleachbit, it’s very powerful and can ruin your system if you go too far cleaning. Ask me how I know 😂
How do you know?
More specificly, how did you break your system? What did you do? Did you “clean” your partition table or something?
Let’s say, I checked too many boxes and messed with the root directory. Anything that shows as “slow” is dangerous
root directory? why are you running bleachbit on linux??
Probably for the same reason someone would run it on Windows. It has both a Windows and Linux version.
Not that person but I tried to do the secure cleaning mode where it zeros empty space but I think I was also downloading something at the same time. This was several years ago but I vaguely recall my system being unable to boot.
Is there a way to turn on dummy mode?
I haven’t used it in a long time, but I know that it has two versions, one root and the other is regular (that’s on Linux, not sure about Windows). Also don’t check those boxes that say something like “slow” or something like that. That’s just my experience. I’m pretty sure if you read up on it or watch a couple of YouTube videos you’ll figure it out.
Oh joy. Must also be why they don’t have portable versions anymore.
Yeah CCcleaner is just a virus at this point, Bleachbit is its spiritual successor + open source
Awesome thanks! You’re the third vote I’ve seen for bleachbit so I’ll definitely look into that one.
Can you elaborate on how it’s a virus? I hear this a lot but haven’t heard any substantial truth aside from referring to a privacy policy that is identical to 90% of every other website anyone else uses.
Piriform was a very trustworthy tool developer until it was surreptitiously bought by a chinese company and immediately turned into a virus for the next release. It instantly lost its trust and has been garbage since that day.
Article about it for those interested… According to this it does not still contain malware, but it has been the target of multiple attacks through the years that has in turn compromised many PC’s. The attack mentioned in this article was suspected to be a state sponsored attack by China, not sure about the others.
https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/ccleaner-malware
Ccleaner has been a malware for at least 5 years.
Are these cleaning apps still a thing?
Honestly I just run WinDirStat and do it manually.
Wiztree is like a hundred times faster, fyi.
He’s not exaggerating. I didn’t believe it was possible but holy shit so much better.
Yeah, just grabbed it and gave it a try. Took under 4 seconds to scan the same drive that WinDirStat took a full 3 minutes to scan.
Thanks for the heads up, I’ll give it a shot next time!
This but wiztree instead.
This but SpaceSniffer instead.
May I ask why?
I suppose it’s mostly personal preference, but I find SpaceSniffer’s display to be a lot more intuitive.
Spacesniffer for me. Also portable. But I’ll check out wiztree for funzies.
I did the same because having it be portable is so much better especially when you’re dealing with a system that has no space available to install.
Spacesniffer is my preferred alternative.
Kind of an unsettling name
I think that’s also in my future, but I liked ccleaner for cleaning up old bits of uninstalled things that didn’t remove themselves cleanly.
Revo for that, but in the moment instead of an afterthought 🤓
Oh, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
do not use it. it’s bad.
Stay away from this garbage. Use BleachBit.
I don’t think I’ve used any cleaner product since the Windows XP days. I don’t view it as necessary anymore.
One of the other programs to see file size on disk recommended on this thread should be enough.
I would highly recommend O&O ShutUp10++ to reduce built in spying in Windows. It’s good at explaining what each option you’re doing is. The only thing I would caution on is changing the Edge browser policies with O&O. That will lock it down into enterprise mode and you won’t be able to change certain settings through the UI anymore.
I don’t think I’ve used any cleaner product since the Windows XP days. I don’t view it as necessary anymore.
I’m the same. Haven’t used one since those days and I work in IT.
This is a fucking public service announcement
You shouldn’t really need this kind of program. Stay away from registry cleaners especially.
No, it starts up and pesters you even if you disable it as a startup service. Malware.
Bleachbit vs BCUninstaller vs WinDirStat vs Wiztree, which should I prefer? I am currently using BCU.
Wiztree is so much faster than WinDirStat it’s silly. Never looked back. Maybe things have changed?
Is wiztree much better than BCU and Bleachbit? Like, removing al the vestiges of an uninstalled program. I feel like BCU is half-assing it. Earlier I used to use Revo Uninstaller which is I think much better than BCU.
I’m using BCU with no complaints. Why do you think Revo is better? Curious to know if it’s worth switching over.
TreeSizeFree
BleacBit+winapp2ool
What do each of those do?
I’m not too familiar with this but Bleachbit is the app and winapp2.ini is something used by both CCleaner and other tools.
winapp2ool is an extended community versions, from their own github docs.
BleachBit:
Open BleachBit.
Select the “Edit” tab, and then “Preferences”.
Check the box that reads “Download and update cleaners from community (Winapp2.ini)”.
Note: BleachBit 2.2 is the last version to work on Windows XP. Winapp2.ini and Winapp3.ini will continue to work with this version.
Let me dig up that Ubuntu ISO link right quick…
