![]() In August 2018, Microsoft quietly announced that it would deprecate Disk Cleanup but keep it available “for compatibility reasons.” Personally, I don’t think the company will ever do away with it because the Settings > Free up space tool is an available alternative. The figures on the right show how much disk space you can regain by deleting each item. The rest of the checked items are usually worth losing, including various kinds of temporary files, upgrade log files, graphics files, and so forth. But I also check Delivery Optimization Files, Recycle Bin, and sometimes also Error Reporting Files, assuming I’m not fighting system issues I may want to report to Feedback Hub or in a support encounter of some kind. When I use this tool, I usually uncheck Thumbnails. Note that it does not select the Recycle Bin (which contains stuff that is usually desirable for cleanup) by default. The boxes you see checked represent the default selections that Windows 10 marks for deletion when you run this utility. "Free up space now" is another way to find and delete files in various places on your drive. Once that scan is complete, you’ll find yourself facing options like the ones in the screen capture below: IDG If you click Settings > System > Storage > Free up space now, the system runs a scan. The second built-in cleanup option comes from Windows 10’s Settings app. Note also that the Downloads item represents the contents of your personal Downloads folder, so don’t delete it unless you’re sure you don’t need anything in there. ![]() Don’t delete old OS versions or updates if you think you might want to roll back to earlier versions. The numbers in the right column indicate how much disk space each item occupies. ![]() You’ll want to scroll through the checkbox items in the pane labeled “Files to delete:” and pick stuff you’d like to get rid of. The venerable Disk Cleanup utility helps you find and delete unwanted files. After Disk Cleanup scans your system, this screencap shows a reasonable facsimile of what you’ll see when it fires up: IDG Why? Only then will it offer to clean up redundant or outdated OS files (such as old OS files after an upgrade, or old updates) as well as other Windows leftovers. Be sure to right-click the program and select Run as administrator from the resulting pop-up menu. Either way, the Disk Cleanup desktop app should appear at the top of those search results. To launch Disk Cleanup, type disk or cleanmgr.exe into the Start menu search box. Either approach provides a great way to clean up extraneous and unneeded Windows 10 files. Though there has been speculation that the first method might disappear as a result, the Disk Cleanup utility remains ready, willing and able to work even in the latest 19H1 Insider Preview (Build 18317) as I write this story. In Windows 10, users gained a second method to clean up disk space, part of its Settings-based “Storage Sense” facility, which is aimed at optimizing storage in Windows 10. Step 1: Run Disk Cleanup or “Free up space now”įrom time immemorial, Windows has included a utility for cleaning up disk space - namely, Disk Cleanup, a.k.a. Best of all, the tools that’ll help you tidy up won’t cost you a dime. That’s exactly what’s explained and explored here, with plenty of examples and screen shots to illustrate the cleanup process. Thus, it’s a good idea to practice disk hygiene on a regular schedule. Indeed, not all those files need be kept around. A more complex, application-heavy system disk might contain between half a million and a million files. These days, a relatively clean and uncomplicated Windows 10 system disk might be home to more than 150,000 files and 90,000 folders.
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