Software update: BleachBit 3.0

BleachBit is a program that can clean up clutter on the computer. It is therefore comparable to Piriform’s CCleaner, but there are also some important differences. Firstly, BleachBit is open source and in addition to a Windows version, there is also a version for Linux. The program can be used in more than sixty languages, including Dutch. By adding winapp2.ini, which it automatically retrieves itself, the program can clean up the traces of more than 1,700 programs. In addition to simple deletion, there is also the option to overwrite the space used by the files several times, making recovery impossible. Andrew Ziem has released version 3.0 and the changelog for this release looks like this:

Changes

• Add ability to make chaff, an anti-forensics system. It generates novel documents inspired by 2600 Magazine or messages inspired by Hillary Clinton’s publicly-released emails.
• Add the command line option –wipe-free-space to wipe the free space in a path.
• Add a new option to enable debug logging. Find it in the Preferences dialog or as the new command line option –debug.
• Improve scanning speed. This could be most noticable in preview, deep scan, when deleting many small files, and during startup. In some cases, the improvement is greater than 10x. (Thanks to Paweł Polewicz.)
• Avoid crash on startup when configuration is corrupt. (Reported by notdexterslab.)
• Improve actual speed of application startup.
• Improve cleaners: aMule, FileZilla, Midnight Commander, VLC, and Vuze. (Thanks to Tobias-B-Besemer.)
• Overhaul cleaner for Thunderbird. (Bug reported by pitsi.)
• Fix the error NameError: global name ‘_’ is not defined.

Graphical user interface

• Upgrade the graphical toolkit from GTK + 2 to GTK 3. (Special thanks to Maël Lavault, Tristan Stenner, and Max Khon.)
• Add dark mode.
• Add a new stop button to the toolbar. (Suggested by shellaaaron.)
• Remember the window size and position and whether it was full screen. (Suggested by BBUser.)
• Make startup seem faster by showing the GUI while loading cleaners in background. (It’s also actually faster.)
• Make the error prettier when update check fails. (Suggested by Tobias-B-Besemer.)
• Fix various file-encoding errors. (Thanks to Radoslav Stoyanov and others. Reported by Jonfre, Tobias-B-Besemer, Mike, ediowar, and others.)
• Reorder the delete / cancel buttons to a more logical order. (Suggested by hydrogenpi).

Specific to Linux

• Add packages for Debian 10 and Ubuntu 19.04.
• Improve detection that Google Chrome is running.
• Delete VIM swap files. (Thanks to petrohs.)
• Fix wiping FAT32 with more than 4GB free space. (Fixed by jamazi)
• Whitelist the mount point for Flatpak. (Reported by Ub3rZ4cH.)
• Whitelist the working directory for the Bluetooth daemon. (Reported by iromeister.)

Specific to Windows

• Improve cleaners: Internet Explorer, Silverlight, TeamViewer, VLC, Windows Media Player, Windows Defender, WinRAR. (Thanks to Tobias-B-Besemer.)
• Fix shredding a file marked read-only. (Reported by Tobias-B-Besemer.)
• Update shipped dependencies: Python, gettext, SQLite, and GTK.
• Drop support for Windows XP.

More

• Do you use GPG? I have a new key for signing releases.
• You can now donate using GitHub sponsors. In the first year, they match your donation and don’t charge processing fees! (There are still other ways to donate including PayPal, credit card, and Bitcoin.)
• Did you know, the first BleachBit release was December 2008, almost 11 years ago?

Developers

• Packagers: please note multiple changes in dependencies and installed files.
• Add search = “walk.top” to delete the top directory and all its contents. It is equivalent to search = “walk.all” to delete the contents (files and directories) followed by search = “file” to delete the empty top directory.
• Add the multi-value variable $$ ProgramFiles $$, which expands to% ProgramFiles% and% ProgramW6432 $%.