
Optimize Your System with BleachBit: An Essential Tool for Privacy and Disk Space Management
As your computer’s storage fills up, maintaining optimal performance becomes crucial.BleachBit is a powerful tool designed to help you reclaim disk space swiftly. Additionally, it prioritizes your privacy by ensuring that your personal information remains secure. With BleachBit, you can efficiently free up cache, eliminate cookies, erase internet browsing history, shred temporary files, and remove logs, along with uninstalling unnecessary junk files that may have accumulated on your device.
This versatile software is compatible with both Linux and Windows operating systems and has the capability to clean thousands of applications, including popular web browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and many others. Beyond mere file deletion, BleachBit offers advanced features such as file shredding to prevent recovery and wiping free disk space to obscure traces of previously deleted files. And best of all, BleachBit is open source, making it a completely free solution.
Notable Features of BleachBit
- Securely delete private files to the extent that, as South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy puts it, “even God can’t read them.”
- User-friendly interface: simply read the descriptions, select the desired options, click preview, and then delete.
- Available for both Linux and Windows platforms.
- Completely free with no financial tracking.
- Open-source model allows sharing, learning, and modifying the source code.
- No adware, spyware, malware, or intrusive browser extensions included.
- Supports translations in 64 languages beyond American English.
- Advance data shredding capabilities that ensure complete file deletion.
- Offers the ability to shred any file, such as spreadsheets, on your desktop.
- Overwrite empty disk space to conceal remnants of deleted files.
- Portable version available for Windows, enabling usage without installation.
- Command line interface allows for scripting and automation tasks.
- CleanerML lets anyone develop a new cleaner with XML coding.
- Automatically sync and update winapp2.ini cleaner files, providing Windows users access to over 2500 additional cleaning options.
- Consistent software updates introduce new functionalities.
Advanced Cleaning Features
In addition to standard file deletions, BleachBit includes a variety of powerful cleaning capabilities:
- Clears memory and swap spaces on Linux systems.
- Removes broken shortcuts and unnecessary localizations in Linux.
- Allows selective deletion of Firefox URL history with optional shredding.
- Optimizes APT for cleaning on Debian-based Linux distributions.
- Finds and removes common junk files such as Thumbs.db and. DS_Store from various locations.
- Cleans cached package data for CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat distributions.
- Removes unwanted registry keys from Windows, often where the most recent usage lists are kept.
- Facilitates selective deletion of recent documents in OpenOffice.org without affecting the entire configuration.
- Vacuuming capabilities for Firefox and other databases to reduce file size while preserving essential data.
- Surgically extracts private information from.ini and JSON configuration files.
- Offers optional data overwriting in SQLite3 databases before deletion to enhance data security.
What’s New in BleachBit 5.0.0?
The latest version (5.0.0) introduces several updates and improvements since version 4.6.1:
- New display language option in preferences (watch demo video).
- Application now closes via CTRL+Q or CTRL+W.
- Less intrusive update notifications.
- Resolved issues with the –debug command line option.
- Supports cleaning variants of Discord, including beta and snap versions.
- Fixes related to personal cleaners in portable mode.
- Enhancements for multi-user system stability, ignoring processes from other users.
- Prevention of invalid entries in custom and whitelist sections.
- Significantly improved stability and performance.
Platform-Specific Enhancements
Linux Updates
- New cleaning options for Librewolf and non-beta Microsoft Edge.
- Improved cleaning procedures for Bash’s temporary files and Geary email client.
- Better handling of rotated logs and broken.desktop files.
- Additions include.rpm packages for Fedora 41, 42, and CentOS 9 Stream, along with.deb packages for Ubuntu 24.10 and 25.04.
Windows Updates
- Patches addressing DLL-related vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-47113, CVE-2025-32780).
- Enhanced protection for MMC snap-ins like Device Manager and Computer Management.
- Upgraded to Python 3.11.10 and GTK 3.24.43, and updated NSIS installer to version 3.11.
- Added metadata to the bleachbit.exe file.
- Discontinued support for Windows XP and 7.
- Updated Windows 10 theme created by Christian Medel.
- Resolved the SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED issue during update checks.
For Developers
- Transitioned Linux Continuous Integration from Travis CI to GitHub Actions.
- Significant codebase cleanup implemented.
- Revamped RPM and DEB build scripts.
- View the complete list of commits.
- Explore the list of closed issues.
Download BleachBit
You can download BleachBit 5.0.0 from the following links:
- Windows Installer
- Portable Version (~20.0 MB, Open Source)
- Visit the BleachBit Home Page for more information and screenshots.

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