It does everything Disk Cleanup does-and more.
The new “Free Up Space” tool in Windows 10 is basically a modern, faster Disk Cleanup. While Disk Cleanup is saying its goodbyes, it still lives on in spirit. In a best-case scenario, Disk Cleanup may have a few years left-but we bet it’ll be gone sooner than that. It may or may not be available in future version of Windows 10, and Microsoft recommends you don’t rely on it. When Microsoft says Disk Cleanup is “ deprecated” starting with the October 2018 update, that means it’s been replaced by a new tool. If you have more than one drive on your PC, select the exact drive you want to clean up.
System Image Backups are deprecated and may be removed soon. To find Disk Cleanup 1, search Disk Cleanup on the Windows taskbar. For example, Microsoft Paint is now also deprecated, and it will be moved out of Windows 10 proper to the Store soon enough. This utility joins a long line of other beloved Windows features that Microsoft is slowly getting rid of. In other words, Windows users are so accustomed to this tool that Microsoft can’t get rid of it overnight. Microsoft says it will keep the utility around for compatibility reasons. “Deprecated” Doesn’t Mean Dead-Not Yet, At Leastĭisk Cleanup isn’t gone just yet. Today, Disk Cleanup still does almost everything we need to do, and we prefer using it rather than riding the CCleaner roller coaster. It was always there and did a solid job without the drama. It even had a malware scare after its servers were hacked.ĭisk Cleanup was the steady tool we could always come back to.
We geeks moved on to more comprehensive tools like CCleaner that also erased other types of temporary files, including gigabytes of NVIDIA driver installer files and web browsing histories from Chrome and Firefox.ĬCleaner might have been packed with features, but it eventually ended up packed with additional software and features that collected data about your PC after Piriform, CCleaner’s developer, was sold to Avast. Okay, okay, let’s be honest: Disk Cleanup fell out of favor. Geeks Turned to CCleaner, But Disk Cleanup Was Always Reliable We’ve been teaching people to use Disk Cleanup for years. On a complicated operating system that kept adding new features over time, Disk Cleanup was always the one-stop location for freeing up disk space.
Whether it was removing a few hundred MB of temporary files on Windows XP or removing more than 10 GB of leftover files after installing a big update to Windows 10, it always worked well to free up the disk space we needed. You can also just launch it from the Start menu or run the cleanmgr.exe program.ĭisk Cleanup has gotten more and more useful over time. It still works the same way on Windows 10 today. Right-click a drive, select “Properties,” and then click the “Disk Cleanup” button to launch it. Whatever version of Windows you’re using, Disk Cleanup has always worked the same way. We’ve been using Disk Cleanup for over 20 years since it debuted in Windows 98. Type disk in the Windows search bar and select the Disk Cleanup app from the Best match.Disk Cleanup deserves a better send-off than a tiny note at the end of a Microsoft blog post. Its space analyzer feature can help you analyze what’s taking up space and delete the large files permanently.
Tip: Alternatively, you can use a professional disk management tool - MiniTool Partition Wizard.
This utility can help free up disk space and delete temporary files. Use Disk Cleanup Toolĭisk cleanup is a Windows built-in tool that can scan the selected drive and show you what temporary files are taking up too much of your disk space. If this simple method can’t fix temporary files won’t delete Windows 10 issue, move on to the following methods. Select all the files and press Shift + Del keys. At last, type prefetch in the Run dialog box and hit Enter. Press Ctrl + Alt keys to select all temporary files and press Shift + Del keys to permanently these files.
Again open the Run dialog box, and then type %temp%in the box and hit Enter. In the Temp folder, press Ctrl + A to select all temporary files and press Shift + Del keys to permanently delete temporary files.