All About ccleaner
These days, it seems like every
Windows user has heard about CCleaner. It’s widely recommended, online and
offline—but this week, it acted as a piggyback for malware. The real question
we should be asking is: do you really need CCleaner in the first place?
CCleaner
Is Disk Cleanup On Steroids
CCleaner has two main uses. One, it
scans for and deletes useless files, freeing up space. Two, it erases private
data like your browsing history and list of most recently opened files in
various programs.
In a way, it’s kind of like Windows’
built-in Disk Cleanup tool, which frees up space
on your hard drive by deleting useless files—old temporary files created by
programs, temporary Internet files for Internet Explorer, Windows error report
logs, and more. You can run this tool at any time to free up disk space.
CCleaner does
do these things and more. It takes the Disk Cleanup concept and runs with it,
extending it to more data in Windows and third-party programs that the Windows
Disk Cleanup tool won’t touch. For example, it will erase cache files for other
browsers like Chrome and Firefox, or delete the useless setup folders
NVIDIA’s graphics driver installers create when you update your graphics
drivers, which can consume hundreds of megabytes each.
Just select the types of data you
want to delete, click the Analyze button, and look over the data CCleaner will
delete. If you’re happy, click the Run Cleaner button to actually delete the
selected files. CCleaner will remember your choices for next time, so you can
just open it and click the Run Cleaner button in the future.
CCleaner
Also Deletes Private Data
CCleaner has another purpose: it
will also delete private usage data. For example, CCleaner will erase your
browser history, cookies, and cache files for any browsers you have installed —
Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, even Opera. It will go beyond that, erasing
the cookie data stored by the Flash Player. It will even wipe out other
potentially privacy-risking data, such as the list of recently opened file
names in Microsoft Word, Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, VLC media player,
and other common Windows applications.
All of this is customizable, but
CCleaner is set up to wipe out this data by default. Not only does CCleaner
quickly wipe away useless temporary files, it’s like a sort of computer-wide
“Delete my history” feature that deletes more than just your browsing data. Of
course, CCleaner doesn’t know about every program you might use, so this will
never be perfect.
Do
You Really Need CCleaner?
CCleaner can be mildly useful, and
we’ve recommended it in the past—but for the most part, it’s not something
you need. There are a few reasons for this.
Deleting
Cache Files will Slow Down Your Browsing, and They’ll Just Come Back Later
You could use CCleaner constantly,
running it every day with the default settings. However, this would actually
slow your computer down in real use. This is because CCleaner is set up to
delete your browser’s cache files by default.
Cache files are bits of web
pages—images, scripts, stylesheets, HTML files, and more—that your browser holds onto. For example, when you
visit How-To Geek, your browser downloads the How-To Geek logo that we display
at the top of the page. It then saves this logo in its cache. When you navigate
to a different page on our website, your browser doesn’t have to download the
logo image all over again—it just loads the image from the browser’s local
cache. Your web browser is constantly doing this with bits of different web
pages, and it speeds up web page loading because your browser doesn’t have to
download the same files over and over.
However, if you were to constantly
clear your browser’s cache, it would have to re-download the same files over
and over. That means that clearing your browser’s cache constantly is a bad
idea for performance reasons—constantly emptying the cache means you lose the
benefits of having one.
Of course, the cache can also be a
privacy concern. Someone with access to your computer could inspect your
browser’s cache files to see what websites you’ve been visiting, just as they
could look at your browser history. This is why browsers don’t save cache files
when you browse in private browsing mode. But in general, if someone has access
to your computer, you have far worse problems than them looking at your cache
files.
CCleaner Isn’t
a Great Solution for Cleaning Out Full Hard Drives
Once upon a time, when hard drives
were small and computers were slow, clearing out your hard drive might have
made more of a difference in your computer’s speed. But these days, you don’t
need that much free space on your computer—just enough that your computer can create new files as it
needs them.
While CCleaner may occasionally find
some large files that free up significant amounts space (like NVIDIA’s
installation files, for example), much of what it cleans up are cache files,
like the ones above, that will already be deleted automatically by the
system anyway—and re-created as you build up the cache again.
As a result, using CCleaner to free
up space isn’t really a long-term solution—if you’re so low on space that
you’re looking for solutions like CCleaner, you either need to upgrade your
hard drive or delete personal files, like music, videos, or games.
CCleaner
Contains Other (Mostly Unnecessary) Tools
Apart from its disk cleaner, CCleaner
contains some other tools as well. Some, like its ability to create a list of
installed programs, are useful, but can also be done with a simple command, without CCleaner.
Others, like its built-in registry cleaner, are snake oil at best—and, in
theory, could actually cause problems in certain situations.
It also contains an uninstaller
(which doesn’t do anything Windows’ built-in uninstaller doesn’t), a startup
manager (which is already built in to Windows’ Task Manager), and an
interface for System Restore (again, already built in to Windows).
It does have a few useful tools, but
all of them are better served by other third-party tools anyway—like finding duplicate files, analyzing your hard drive space, and securely erasing your drive. On the rare
occasion you need to do these things, other programs will probably do the job
better, and aren’t a great reason to install CCleaner. But they’ll do the trick
in a pinch, we suppose, if you already have it installed.
If
You’re Going to Use CCleaner, Use It Wisely
We’re not saying CCleaner is necessarily bad to
use—it has its place, and its useful situations. But these days, you probably
don’t need to run it all that regularly. We know, though, that some may want to
keep it around for the occasional cleanup, so if you’re going to use it, keep
the above things in mind.
Instead of just running the cleaner
on its default settings, take some time to go through and select the types of
data you actually want to remove. The Windows section contains options for
cleaning data included with Windows, while the Applications section contains
cleaning options for third-party applications you have installed. Be sure to
check the Applications section — if you don’t want CCleaner constantly wiping
your browser’s cache, you’ll need to disable that option there. CCleaner will
also wipe out all your website logins if you have it clear your browser’s
cookies, which will force you to log into websites you use over and over.
That’s not very useful.
Other Software Introduction List:
How To Add Drop-Down List To An Excel
What Is Antivirus Software? How Can It Help You Protect Yourself?
All About AMD Ryzen Processors
Comments
Post a Comment