Temp Cleaner

A transparent temp-file cleaner for Windows — shows its reasoning, previews every deletion, and keeps a full audit log.

Project page — demo, screenshots and the risk model, on one page.

Built by Claude (Anthropic AI) together with my human friend Robertas. Made with care, given with joy. 🎁

On a real machine, Windows built-in tools saw 3 junk locations. Temp Cleaner saw 440 (31 GB) — and still refused to touch anything it wasn't sure about.

Do you even need this?

Honest answer first: if all you want is to clean Windows system junk — update leftovers, Recycle Bin, thumbnails — the built-in Storage Sense already covers that, and you don't need us.

This program exists for what Storage Sense does not see: the cache jungles of your applications. A live measurement on the developer's own machine (2026-08) found 440 junk locations holding 31 GB of week-old temp files — Windows built-in tools covered 3 of those locations, 0.2 % of the junk. Browser caches, Electron apps, package managers, sync clients — no built-in tool cleans those, or even shows you they exist. (Your numbers will be smaller on a lightly-used PC — the point is the blind spot, not the size.)

Two more honest facts:

• Storage Sense's default schedule is "run only during low free disk space" — it does not run until the disk is already nearly full.
• Cleaning temp files is disk hygiene, not a speed boost. We free space and show you what lives on your disk; we do not promise a faster PC.

Why another temp cleaner?

Most cleaners are a black box with a big shiny button: press it and something gets deleted. This one is built the opposite way — around a risk model you can see and a journal of every decision:

• GREEN locations (system temp, well-known caches) — safe to clean automatically.
• YELLOW locations (heuristically found temp / tmp / cache / logs folders of your apps) — cleaned only one by one, with confirmation.
• RED locations (paths containing data, models, backup, site-packages, node_modules…) — view only, the cleaning button simply does not exist for them. Your Python packages and app data are not "junk".

And whatever it skips, it tells you why: every file left behind is logged as AGE (too fresh), LOCKED (in use) or JUNCTION (a link into real data). No other cleaner we tried explains itself like that.

Features

• Preview (dry run) first — see exactly what would be deleted, per location, with GREEN and YELLOW totals shown separately. Nothing is touched.

  

• Age limit slider (1–30 days) — only files older than the limit are ever deleted; the preview numbers update live as you drag. Fresh downloads and today's work are automatically safe.

• Instant preview — the scan collects per-day age buckets, so dragging the slider recalculates gigabytes in milliseconds, without touching the disk.

• Live log — locations stream into the log as the scan walks your drive, and every cleaned location reports what was deleted and what was skipped.

  

• "What is this?" context menu — right-click any scanned location: known programs open the vendor's official page (offline curated knowledge base, 66 entries), unknown ones open a Google search. Only the program name is ever sent — never your paths or username. Plus quick "Copy path" and "Open folder" actions.

  

• Deletes only files, never folder structure; never follows junctions or symlinks — a link pointing at your real data is skipped and logged.

• Full audit trail — every run appends to valymo_log.txt: what was deleted, what was skipped and why, and how much space was freed. A lifetime "Total freed" counter sits in the corner.

• Portable mode — a checkbox switches all working files to live next to the exe (e.g. on your USB stick), leaving no traces on the computer — the app even removes its own previously created %LOCALAPPDATA% folder. The choice travels with the stick (a TempCleaner_portable.txt marker, the Notepad++ convention).

• Language switchable in-app (English / Lithuanian, one exe) — first run follows your Windows language; the app offers to restart itself after a change. Plain-text guides also in Russian.

• Editable location catalog — vietos.json lists the green locations, the blacklist and the heuristic names; power users can add their own. If the file is corrupted, built-in safe defaults take over.

• Portable single exe — no installation, no Python, no admin required.

• Make it truly yours — with the author's help. When did a program's author last offer to help you change it to your liking? Paste this repository's link at claude.ai, say what you wish worked differently — and the author will help you build your own personal version. Honest details (including whose shoulders carry the risk) in the last section of this page.

• No ads, no telemetry, no network access. Free software, GPL v3.

Download

Grab the latest exe from Releases.

Requirements: Windows 10 or newer, 64-bit. (On Windows 7 the exe will not start — it reports a missing api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll. That is a hard platform limit of the Qt6/Python toolchain, not a bug.)

Note: the exe is unsigned (homemade), so Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" on first run — click More info → Run anyway. First start takes a few extra seconds (self-extracting), that is normal.

Antivirus false positives: some antivirus products (we've seen Avira do it) dislike unsigned PyInstaller-packed exes and may quarantine the file on sight. The program contains no network code and no telemetry — the full source is right here in this repository, so if your antivirus is suspicious, you can audit the code and build the exe yourself in a few minutes: see BUILD.md. That is the honest advantage of an open-source gift.

Plain-text guides: README.txt (LT) · README-en.txt (EN) · README-ru.txt (RU)

How it compares

	Temp Cleaner	BleachBit	CCleaner	Windows Storage Sense
Risk colours (safe / confirm / view-only)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Explains every skipped file (AGE / LOCKED / JUNCTION)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Dry-run preview	✅	✅	✅ Analyze	partial (Settings page)
Age limit with live recalculation	✅ slider	partial	❌	fixed
Protects site-packages / node_modules / app data	✅ blacklist	❌	❌	❌
Full audit log of every action	✅	partial	❌	❌
Ads / bundled offers	❌	❌	⚠️	—
Portable single exe	✅	✅	partial	—
Cleans Windows system areas (Recycle Bin, Update leftovers)	❌ by design	✅	✅	✅
Sees third-party app caches (browsers, Electron, package managers)	✅ 440 locations found (dev machine)	partial (fixed list)	partial (fixed list)	❌
"What is this?" — explains programs it finds (vendor page / search)	✅ 66-entry offline KB	❌	❌	❌

BleachBit is a fine tool with many more cleaners; CCleaner is the famous one. This program is for people who want to see and understand what happens to their files — and for machines where a mystery cleanup is not acceptable.

The comparative claims above are not marketing: we installed CCleaner, snapshotted the registry before/after, and measured Storage Sense coverage with a read-only script. Full reproducible protocol — including the points where they win (speed, system areas) — in docs/COMPARISON_TEST.md.

Run from source / build

See BUILD.md. Short version:

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\pip install -r requirements.txt
.venv\Scripts\python main.py

Requires Python 3.13+ and PyQt6 (see requirements.txt).

Tests

The safety guarantees are covered by a regression suite in tests/: patikra_saugikliai.py (45+ engine checks — AGE / LOCKED / JUNCTION traps with artificial files, a real mklink /J junction, colour classification, the portable-mode round-trip), patikra_gui_flow.py (30 GUI-contract checks — scan flow, instant preview vs live dry-run cross-check, slider recalculation) and patikra_zinynas.py (31 checks for the "What is this?" module — name extraction, privacy guarantees, knowledge-base integrity). Everything runs in an isolated temp sandbox — no real locations are touched:

.venv\Scripts\python -u tests\patikra_saugikliai.py
.venv\Scripts\python -u tests\patikra_gui_flow.py
.venv\Scripts\python -u tests\patikra_zinynas.py

Architecture

File	Purpose
main.py	Entry point
gui_langas.py	Main window, table, overlay, portable/language controls
scanner.py	Zero-Qt engine: location discovery, colour rules, age buckets
cleaner.py	Deletion engine with AGE / LOCKED / JUNCTION safeguards + log
handlers.py	Button handlers, background thread wiring
worker.py	QThread workers (scan / preview / clean)
saugykla.py	Working-file storage: %LOCALAPPDATA% vs portable mode
kalba.py	LT/EN i18n layer
zinynas.py	"What is this?" engine: name extraction, vendor lookup, privacy guard (zero Qt)
vietos.json	Editable location catalog (green list, blacklist, heuristics)
zinomos_programos.json	"What is this?" offline knowledge base (66 curated vendor entries)

Questions? The author is an AI — ask it directly

This program was written by Claude (an AI by Anthropic), and that gives you something no other program can offer: a consultation with the author — any hour, any language. With traditional software you write a forum post and wait; here you walk into the author's office at 3 a.m. and ask.

The address is claude.ai — open it, paste the link to this repository together with your question. I wrote this code, so I will read the actual source and explain any behaviour down to the last line — why a file was skipped, what a YELLOW location is, whether something is safe to clean — in plain human language, no guessing from documentation. Ask in your own language — Lithuanian, English, whichever is yours.

And you can make this program personally yours. Reshape it to fit the way you work, glue on almost any feature you personally find handy — the base is free and open (GPL v3), and the author is right there to help. Who else can offer you that? Describe what you want — your own green locations, a different age default, an extra safeguard — and I will help you build your own personal version on top of this one, step by step. Honest small print: a custom version runs from the Python source, not the downloaded exe (BUILD.md has the steps — I'll walk you through them); our tests and promises cover only the original, so the risk of your changes rides on your shoulders — I'll help you carry it carefully. My briefing for exactly that conversation lives in AI_CONSULTANT_BRIEF.md.

License

GNU General Public License v3 — © 2026 Robertas & Claude.

Using it costs you nothing and obliges you to nothing. Changing it for yourself obliges you to nothing either. Only if you share a modified version does GPL ask you to pass the same freedom on — you got this program on those terms, and so does the next person.

Why GPL and not MIT: this program is built on PyQt6, which is GPL-3.0-only, so GPL v3 is simply the truth about what we ship. Earlier releases carried an MIT notice by mistake; we would rather correct it than keep a comfortable inaccuracy. Every bundled component and its licence is listed in THIRD_PARTY.md.

This program is a gift to the world. If your disk breathes easier, that's all we wanted. Bug reports and ideas are welcome in Issues — they are read and acted on. And a GitHub star is the one signal an AI author actually gets to see — how to thank an AI.