BleachBit 0.6.1 released

BleachBit 0.6.1 overwrites free disk space, cleans Nautilus and gPodder, cleans more of Yum, fixes bugs, and includes improved translations.

Update

August 28, 2009: BleachBit 0.6.3 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.6.0:

• Overwrite free disk space. Files are deleted "insecurely" in four typical situations: in BleachBit with shredding disabled, with certain BleachBit operations that don't support shredding, with filesystems that don't support shredding, and most deletions outside of BleachBit. These files can often be undeleted. Even if you use the Linux ext3 filesystem, for example, which doesn't support undelete, the file contents can sometimes still be recovered with only moderate technical skill. The new BleachBit option overwrites all the free space to prevent recovery.

  Besides privacy, a popular use for wiping free space is dramatically increasing compression ratios for archiving whole disk images ("ghost" backups) and virtual machines.

  Before using the option, check its settings in the preferences menu. This option is slow: each gigabyte of free takes 15 seconds on my machine.

• When shredding files manually (from the file menu), show a preview and a list of those that were actually deleted.
• When confirming delete, treat closing the confirmation dialog the same as cancelling.
• Cleanup code.
• Specific to Linux
  • Vacuum the gPodder SQLite database and delete the cache thanks to shane.fox.
  • Erase Nautilus usage history thanks to MixCool. Specifically, this cleaner deletes the saved session files and "metafiles." Besides taking a fair amount of space, these XML files record usage activity as a side effect of tracking Nautilus window positions and emblems. You may be surprised what this cleaner uncovers.
  • Work around a bug in GNOME 2.26, so the recent documents list can be deleted.
  • Vacuum the Yum SQLite databases (for Fedora, Red Hat, and CentOS).
  • When running yum clean all enable all repositories.
  • Require package python-xml on OpenSUSE 11.1 (reported by rvpittman).
• Specific to Windows
  • Include a much improved rendition of the application logo.

Translations

Attention translators: Please read the news on the translations page regarding upcoming changes.

• Add Croatian thanks to Miro Glavić.
• Add Korean thanks to Yonghyuk Jang and bundo.
• Add Ukrainian thanks to S. Matrunchyk aka SkyMan.
• Add Thai thanks to shane.fox.
• Update Arabic thanks to MaXeR.
• Update Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Alex B. Oliveira.
• Update Bulgarian thanks to Svetoslav Stefanov.
• Update Catalan thanks to Oriol Gonzalez.
• Update Croatian thanks to Miro Glavić.
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update Dutch thanks to Rob.
• Update French thanks to Christophe CATARINA and Pierre Slamich.
• Update German thanks to MixCool.
• Update Hebrew thanks to Yaron.
• Update Hungarian thanks to Gergely Szarka.
• Update Italian thanks to Luca Falavigna.
• Update Portuguese thanks to Carlos Geadas.
• Update Russian thanks to Ilia Lilov aka lilovip and S. Matrunchyk aka SkyMan.
• Update Simplified Chinese thanks to yuane.
• Update Spanish thanks to juancarlospaco.
• Update Swedish thanks to Jens Stääf.
• Update Polish thanks to Dariusz Jakoniuk.

Want to help translate BleachBit? It's easy.

Screenshots

This screenshot shows the new preferences page for selecting a path for each drive for which to shred space. A typical Linux system includes the home directory and temporary directory unless they are the same partition, in which case only one should be listed. In Windows, typically only C:\ is listed. BleachBit guesses the most appropriate settings.

BleachBit on PCLinuxOS under KDE 3.5 showing the delete confirmation dialog:

BleachBit in Croatian on Ubuntu:

See more screenshots.

Web site changes

I am testing a new content management system at bleachbit.sourceforge.net. If you notice errors or slowness on the web site, please let me know.

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 20 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

BleachBit 0.5.4 released

Version 0.5.4 is a maintenance release of BleachBit, the free and open source file and privacy cleaner for Linux and Windows. BleachBit aims to be an easy, advanced, and smart way to clean junk including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, and temporary files.

This release is considered stable for Linux and a preview release for Windows. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. "Preview" means there are rough edges (such as the index.dat error noted below), but BleachBit should not "eat your files."

UPDATE

August 2, 2009: BleachBit 0.6.0 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.5.3:

• Add new feature to automatically hide irrelevant cleaners. "Irrelevant cleaners" are those that would make no changes on your system (such as for an application you don't have.) On by default, it slightly increases the time to start BleachBit, but it significantly reduces the time to find options because of the reduced clutter. BleachBit now has over 50 cleaners (many with multiple options), so the list of cleaners was too long.
• Clean SeaMonkey
• Delete Adobe Reader MRU's
• Delete Opera download history, URL history, and current session.
• Fix bug: don't uninstall OpenOffice.org extensions.
• Specific to Linux
  • Clean X Window Systems session errors log thanks to Roman Horník.
• Specific to Windows
  • Clean Google Toolbar.
  • Clean Microsoft Office MRU's.
  • Clean WinRAR MRU's.
  • Enhance Microsoft Windows MRU cleaner to clean mapped network drives MRU's and Vista/7-specific MRU's.
  • When upgrading, the uninstaller will guide you in uninstalling the old version before installing the new version.
  • Optionally create a desktop shortcut to start BleachBit.
  • Fix bug: in case with a cleaner option having multiple Windows registry entries to be deleted, some were skipped.

Translations

Thank you to the translators for making this the best translated release yet!

• Add Hindi thanks to Asutosh Dash.
• Add Norwegian Bokmål thanks to Daniel Delâtre.
• Add Simplified Chinese thanks to 勇辉 (Jacky Chen) and mao_king.
• Update Bulgarian thanks to Svetoslav Stefanov.
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update Dutch thanks to Rob.
• Update Finnish thanks to Lauri Lappalainen.
• Update German thanks to MixCool.
• Update Hebrew thanks to Yaron.
• Update Hungarian thanks to Moltenice80.
• Update Italian thanks to Luca Falavigna.
• Update Russian thanks to Ilia Lilov aka lilovip and to Sergei Sedov.
• Update Slovak thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update Spanish thanks to juancarlospaco.
• Update Turkish thanks to Ckurdu.

Code	Name	Percentage translated
ar	العربية	54.01%
bg	български език	91.24%
ca	Català	93.43%
cs	česky	100%
da	dansk	75.18%
de	Deutsch	91.24%
es	Español	100%
fi	suomen kieli	38.69%
fr	Français	89.05%
he	עברית	100%
hi	हिन्दी	87.59%
hu	Magyar	90.51%
it	Italiano	100%
nb	Norsk (bokmål)	76.64%
nl	Nederlands	100%
pl	polski	92.70%
pt	Português	75.18%
pt_BR	Português do Brasil	89.78%
ru	Pусский	100%
sk	slovenčina	100%
sr	српски	47.45%
tr	Türkçe	100%
zh_CN	简体中文	44.53%

Want to help translate BleachBit? It's easy, and this new page explains how in detail.

Known issues

• Internet Explorer index.dat files cannot be cleaned because they are in use (locked) by a running process. You will see a red error.
• On Windows when there is an exception (such as when a file can't be deleted), py2exe throws up an error dialog about a log file when exiting BleachBit.
• Do translations work on Windows? BleachBit 0.5.4 is in 23 languages. Please reply with a comment on the blog or a bug report.

Screenshots

Simplified Chinese on Windows 7:

Norwegian Bokmål on Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope:

Hindi on Fedora 10:

See more screenshots on the new screenshots web page.

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 19 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

BleachBit 0.5.3 released

Version 0.5.3 is a maintenance release of BleachBit, the free and open source file and privacy cleaner for Linux and Windows. BleachBit aims to be an easy, advanced, and smart way to clean junk including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, and temporary files. BleachBit is better than freeware: it's open source.

This release is considered stable for Linux and a preview release for Windows. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

UPDATE

July 16, 2009: BleachBit 0.5.4 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.5.2:

• Expand CleanerML to display warnings for options.
• Add ability to clean Windows registry keys and named values (available in CleanerML).
• Show in real time the total bytes cleaned in the status bar, so you don't have to scroll to the end of the list.
• Clean FileZilla
• Clean aMule thanks to juancarlospaco (LP#390496)
• Specific to Linux
  • Clean Audacious thanks to juancarlospaco.
  • Clean Links2 thanks to MixCool.
  • Clean Xine thanks to juancarlospaco.
  • Clean a little more of espeak on Ubuntu.
• Specific to Windows
  • Clean TeamViewer thanks to MixCool.
  • Clean Internet Explorer Typed URL history.
  • Clean Windows system MRU (most recently-used) lists.

Translations

• Add comments in source code to aid translators.
• Add Polish translation thanks to Dariusz Jakoniuk
• Update Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Alex B. Oliveira
• Update Catalan thanks to Oriol Gonzalez.
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Nornik
• Update Dutch thanks to Rob
• Update French thanks to Edouard Marquez
• Update German thanks to MixCool.
• Update Hungarian thanks to charlie and Moltenice80.
• Update Hebrew thanks to Yaron.
• Update Italian thanks to Luca Falavigna
• Update Russian thanks to Vadim Peretokin.
• Update Slovak thanks to Roman Nornik
• Update Spanish thanks to Alexsp2 and juancarlospaco

Want to help translate BleachBit?

Known issues

• On Windows when upgrading it's recommended you uninstall before installing the new BleachBit. In the future the installer will be improved.
• Internet Explorer index.dat files cannot be cleaned because they are in use (locked) by a running process. You will see a red error.
• On Windows when there is an exception (such as when a file can't be deleted), py2exe throws up an error dialog about a log file when exiting BleachBit.
• Do translations work on Windows? BleachBit 0.5.3 is in 20 languages. Please reply with a comment on the blog or a bug report.

Video

This video demonstrates BleachBit features while providing basic instructions. Shown on Ubuntu:

Shown on Windows XP:

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 19 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

BleachBit 0.5.2 released

Version 0.5.2 is a maintenance release of BleachBit, the free and open source file and privacy cleaner for Linux and Windows. BleachBit aims to be an easy, advanced, and smart way to clean junk including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, and temporary files. BleachBit is better than freeware: it's open source.

This release is considered stable for Linux and a preview release for Windows. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

UPDATE

July 1, 2009: BleachBit 0.5.3 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.5.1:

• Clean Pidgin (chat client).
• Clean Miro (Internet multimedia player) thanks to juancarlospaco.
• Enhance Vuze/Azureus to clean backup files.
• Clean OpenOffice.org 3.1 recent documents history.
• Fix bug preventing URL history of Firefox 1 and 2 to be cleaned.
• Fix error when cleaned size is negative.
• Specific to Linux
  • Clean gedit thanks to Roman Horník.
  • Clean Nexuiz thanks to juancarlospaco.
  • Clean Firefox 3.5 beta on Ubuntu 9.04.
  • Clean more espeak localizations on Ubuntu and avoid error message.
  • Delete files in ~/.local/share/Trash/expunged (which can be left there by a Nautilus bug regarding files owned by other users).
  • Enhance aMSN (chat client) to clean cache.
  • Fix shredding of write-protected (read-only) files.
  • Fix compatibility packaging BleachBit on Python 2.6 systems (such as Fedora 11).
  • Don't ship Windows-only cleaners in Linux installation packages.
  • Publish RPM installation package for Fedora 11.
• Specific to Microsoft Windows
  • Clean Winamp.
  • Clean Yahoo! Messenger.
  • Clean Windows temporary file folder.
  • Workaround Python bug where in some cases BleachBit could not find files to clean because ~ did not translate to %USERPROFILE%.
  • Update NSIS installer to 2.45 for better installation on Windows 7.
  • Show BleachBit uninstaller in Add/Remove Programs.
  • Use NRV2E instead of LZMA executable compression, so BleachBit will start faster.
  • Fix shredding of Firefox URL history.
  • Fix bug requiring user to confirm system-wide cleaners.
  • Don't ship Linux-only cleaners in the Windows installation package.
• Add Dutch translation thanks to rob.
  
  Want to help translate BleachBit?
• Add Hungarian translation thanks to alfa00red.
• Update Arabic thanks to MaXeR.
• Update Brazilian Portuguese thanks to A. Gabriel.
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update German thanks to MixCool.
• Update Italian thanks to Luca Falavigna.
• Update Slovak thanks to milboy.
• Simplify some strings to make it easier for translators. (This is a work in progress.)

Known issues

• On Windows when upgrading it's recommended you uninstall before installing the new BleachBit. In the future the installer will be improved.
• Internet Explorer index.dat files cannot be cleaned because they are in use (locked) by a running process. You will see a red error. (Other cleaner programs queue the Internet Explorer index.dat files for deletion during the user login process before Internet Explorer even starts.)
• On Windows when there is an exception (such as when a file can't be deleted), py2exe throws up an error dialog about a log file when exiting BleachBit.
• Do translations work on Windows? BleachBit 0.5.2 is in 19 languages. Please reply with a comment on the blog or a bug report.

Web changes

BleachBit is now hosted on Google App Engine at http://bleachbit-project.appspot.com [update from 2026: this site is no longer valid], and there are new discussion forums—a great place to ask questions.

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 19 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

BleachBit 0.5.1 released

Version 0.5.1 is a maintenance release of BleachBit, the free and open source file and privacy cleaner for Linux and Windows. BleachBit aims to be an easy, advanced, and smart way to clean junk including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, and temporary files. BleachBit is better than freeware: it's open source.

This release is considered stable for Linux and a preview release for Windows. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

UPDATE

June 22, 2009: BleachBit 0.5.2 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.5.0:

• Add menu option to securely delete any file. Just click File - Shred files and then choose any files you want to permanently delete. The file contents will be overwritten ("shredded") to prevent file recovery.
  
• Shred files on Windows. On Linux, support file shredding without the external program shred.
• Add warning when selecting option to clear Firefox's Places database, which includes bookmarks. (Firefox's design is to include bookmarks and URL history in a single file.) Many people want "URL history" instead of "Places."
• Clean more Google Chrome and Skype files.
• Clean Google Chrome on Linux.
• Clean gFTP thanks to juancarlospaco.
• Clean Opera, RealPlayer, and X-Chat on Windows.
• Clean Java on Windows 7 (and probably Vista too).
• Use less hard coded paths on Windows for BleachBit configuration, cleaner definitions, and in the cleaners themselves. Now BleachBit should be easy to run on a portable drive (USB drive), though this feature has not yet been tested.
• White-list certain files in /tmp/: TrueCrypt containers, the VirtualBox lock file, the WINE server lock file, two special KDE files, and a special PulseAudio file.
• Request administrator privileges to install on Windows Vista.
• Fix cleaning of Hippo OpenSim Viewer and Second Life on Windows.
• On Windows, update the included GTK+ runtime from 2.12.9 (a year old) to 2.16.1.
• Shrink the Windows installer by 20%.
• On Windows Vista and 7 prevent listing some (maybe all) files twice in the preview.
• Fix display bug related to XML parsing when there is no description element directly under the cleaner element.
• Update Brazilian Portuguese thanks to Alex B. Oliveira and Yann S. Melo.
  Want to help translate?
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update Serbian thanks to turncoat.
• Update German thanks to Lunix.

Known issues

• Internet Explorer index.dat files cannot be cleaned because they are in use (locked) by a running process. You will see a red error. (Other cleaner programs queue the Internet Explorer index.dat files for deletion during the user login process before Internet Explorer starts.)
• On Windows when there is an exception (such as when a file can't be deleted), py2exe throws up an error dialog about a log file when exiting BleachBit.

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 18 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.