BleachBit is a Windows utility that helps you reclaim disk space on your PC and protect your privacy. This program enables you to permanently delete unnecessary data, such as web browser cache, temporary files, and many others.
Its interface is very intuitive and filled with detailed instructions for every type of task which can be completed by BleachBit. So, it requires minimum PC experience to make use of its features.
All you need to do is to select the types of files you wish to permanently delete from your computer and click the "Clean" button. A great aspect is that you can see exactly what you're about to remove from your PC before launching the cleaning process. Simply select the category in question and click the "Preview" button.
The only thing that bothered me was that the program took a while to wipe free disk space (the option can be found in the main menu of the tool and hides the traces of the files that were deleted by other programs). In my testing, BleachBit spent more than 30 minutes to complete this type of task. However, the rest of the given assignments were completed pretty fast.
Even though it might take a while to complete some tasks, I still think it's worth giving BleachBit a try. It's open source and can be used for free for as long as you like.
v1.9.4 [Nov 30, 2015]
- Clean passwords on Firefox version 32+.
- Clean Google Chrome cookies for non-default profiles.
- Clean more autofill on Google Chrome (reported by pcdoctor01). If you are logged in to Google Chrome, it may automatically restore some of these values from your online Google account unless you disable the option Show addresses and credit cards from Google Payments in the autofill page of Google Chrome settings.
- Add size column to side tree control (thanks to Ivor Hewitt).
- Add an option to show file sizes as IEC units (1 KiB = 1024 bytes) instead of SI units (1 kB = 1000 bytes; thanks to Tristan Stenner).
- Speed up identification of files using regular expressions by 5% to 50%
- Allow relative paths with --shred command line argument (reported by Eva Putnam).
- Add descriptions for cleaners (thanks to theatre-x).
- Fix resizing of preference dialog (thanks to Anton Bobov).
- Warn when deleting passwords on Firefox (reported by Theatre-X).
- Accept abbreviations T and F in bleachbit.ini configuration (reported by Ken Wallace).
- Show a user-friendly error message when checking for updates fails because of a network error (reported by Gary).
- Improve logging of errors. Some errors are more informative, and on Windows, errors are unlikely to cause a popup message about bleachbit.exe.log.
- The primary download mirror now secures connections using HTTPS. (This is in addition to the digital signatures on Windows executables and PGP-signed hashes.)
Specific to Windows:
- Show the User Access Control on Windows 10. This helps elevate BleachBit to administrator privileges. (reported by Mike L.).
- Fix handling of Windows 10 in Winapp2.ini in DetectOS= .
- Avoid error pop-up message when exiting application after cleaning non-removable directory (reported by ineuw, goingoin, michael54854 ).
- Avoid pop-up error message when exiting application after exhaust rename.
- Fix cleaning of MRU for Adobe Reader versions 5-11 (reported by Arkwright).
- Update to NSIS installer to version 2.50.
- Fix error in same_partition(...) when Microsoft Office Starter 2010 is installed, which creates an inaccessible virtual drive Q: (reported by goingoin).
- Add a new shortcut BleachBit No UAC, which starts BleachBit without requesting administrator privileges using the User Access Control dialog.
- Remove an extra shortcut from the Start menu.
