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BleachBit Changelog

What's new in BleachBit 4.6.0

Nov 6, 2023
  • CHANGES:
  • These are the changes since version 4.4.2:
  • Clean recently-closed tabs on Firefox (reported by Luran2132).
  • Clean autofill data in Chromium-based browsers (thanks to rados).
  • Clean more of Firefox: AlternativeServices.txt.
  • Improve support for FileZilla (thanks to fbruand).
  • Support new versions of GIMP and add runtime detection (thanks to Finoway).
  • Fix AttributeError and "OperationalError: no such table" when cleaning Firefox (thanks to rados and az0).
  • Add workaround for DLL security vulnerability (reported by Daniel Hulliger, aka dhulliger).
  • Prevent opening other dialogs when making chaff (thanks to sanjaykaria).
  • Vacuum last after other operations in every language (reported by Tobias-B-Besemer, fixed by sanjaykaria).
  • Add title for dialogs.
  • Enable more strings to be translated (reported by bovirus).
  • Improve organization of --help in the CLI (thanks to abitrolly).
  • Show debug information in CLI only if --debug or --preset is set (thanks to abitrolly).
  • Fix crash when wiping free space with Brazilian Portuguese (reported by fnfontana).
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Clean Microsoft Edge on Linux (requested by aoguang).
  • Clean Firefox and Thunderbird when installed as Flatpak (thanks to MauroGuida).
  • Clean Google Chrome as Flatpak (thanks to fbruand).
  • Clean recent documents list on KDE 5 (thanks to Martii).
  • Clean Firefox installed as a snap (thanks to rodin-ia).
  • Add shred context menu for KDE (thanks to kenrap).
  • Keep bookmark icons in Firefox (thanks to rados).
  • Keep xauth files in /tmp (reported by iromeister).
  • Fix "Permission denied: /proc/" (reported by igorog).
  • Use branded icon in application launcher (thanks to baraeerriyachy).
  • Fix detection of invalid .desktop files (thanks to kenrap).
  • Fix the error "The child memory-wiping process returned code 9." (thanks to jonas-w).
  • Notify user when running as root with Wayland (thanks to rados).
  • Fix ModuleNotFoundError (reported by hbednar).
  • Remove Windows-specific files from Linux packages, again (reported by robots4life).
  • Remove unneeded SafeConfigParser causing startup error on Python 3.12 span class="credit">(thanks to mhmdanas).
  • Add python3-psutil dependency.
  • Specific to Windows:
  • Clean more Windows updates (reported by liar666).
  • Fix Windows redirection in Internet Explorer (reported by elgatov).
  • Fix fullscreen bug (thanks to sanjaykaria).
  • Internationalize Windows installer and translate to Italian (thanks to bovirus).
  • Add descriptions for components in installer (thanks to bovirus).
  • Do not report error when wiping path that does not exist (reported by i0629).
  • Do not show error "Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_view_scroll_mark_onscreen" (reported by idiowar, fixed by mkhon).
  • Allow Winapp to have drive letter followed by filename (thanks to rados).
  • Update bundled SQLite from 3.37.2 to 3.43.2.
  • Update UPX executable compressor to 4.1.0.
  • Developers:
  • See the list of commits or list of closed issues.
  • Translation has moved from Launchpad to Weblate, which automatically commits changes via Git, which in turn triggers CI builds. This means you can download a Windows build shortly after making translation changes. Weblate also has usability improvements and features to enhance quality.
  • Install depdendency chardet on Travis (thanks to abitrolly).
  • Refactor (thanks to kenrap).
  • Clean more files with make clean.

New in BleachBit 4.5.1 Beta (Oct 26, 2023)

  • TESTS:
  • Please test the application in general with special attention to the following tests.
  • These tests are for both Windows and Linux:
  • Verify that BleachBit does not delete Firefox bookmarks icons (1081).
  • Create a temporary directory. In BleachBit - Preferences - Drives, add the directory. Close the preferences, and remove the directory. In BleachBit, enable System - Free disk space, and clean it. Verify the message is more friendly than in 1273.
  • Verify the confirmation dialog has a title (1188).
  • Clean GIMP (1326).
  • Clean FileZilla (1438).
  • Clean Thunderbird installed as flatpak (1488).
  • Under Firefox, choose option for "session restore," and verify recently closed tabs are cleaned (1365). Option must be enabled in Firefox.
  • On non-English display, verify the options are sorted by the local language (441). Vacuum option should be last still.
  • Clean Firefox, and there should not be an error "no such table" (1429).
  • The dialog windows should have titles (1188).
  • LINUX:
  • Check for the GTK-CRITICAL warning using the instructions at the top of 974.
  • Verify the correct icon is displayed in the application launcher (1513).
  • Clean Firefox installed as snap (1363).
  • Clean Microsoft Edge (1493).
  • Clean Google Chrome installed as flatpak (1394).
  • Verify Wayland (1205).
  • Clean memory, and you should not get error 9 (742).
  • Clean KDE 5 recent documents (1371).
  • Delete invalid .desktop files (1067).
  • In KDE, use the context menu (1400.
  • Check that the application launcher shows the BleachBit logo instead of a generic icon (1513).
  • Check that when using the GUI that the terminal does not have messages like (bleachbit.py:5238): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_text_view_scroll_mark_onscreen: assertion 'get_buffer (text_view) == gtk_text_mark_get_buffer (mark)' failed (974).
  • Test installers for Fedora 37
  • Test installers for Ubuntu 22.04, 23.04, 23.10.
  • Test installers for Debian 12
  • WINDOWS:
  • During installation, there should be description of components (221).
  • Use Windows Explorer to open %WinDir%System32configSystemprofileAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsINetCache. If it is empty, copy any file there. Open BleachBit with administrator privileges, and clean Internet Explorer - Cache. Verify the file was removed. (1031)
  • If c:windows.old does not exist, create it. Then use BleachBit to clean System - Windows Updates, and verify it was removed. (1031).

New in BleachBit 4.5.0 Beta (Sep 13, 2023)

  • CHANGES:
  • For a list of changes see the commit log and GitHub bug tracker.
  • TESTS:
  • Please test the application in general with special attention to the following tests.
  • These tests are for both Windows and Linux:
  • Verify that BleachBit does not delete Firefox bookmarks (1081).
  • Create a temporary directory. In BleachBit - Preferences - Drives, add the directory. Close the preferences, and remove the directory. In BleachBit, enable System - Free disk space, and clean it. Verify the message is more friendly than in 1273.
  • Verify the confirmation dialog has a title (1188).
  • LINUX:
  • Check for the GTK-CRITICAL warning using the instructions at the top of 974.
  • Verify the correct icon is displayed in the application launcher (1513).
  • Verify Wayland (1205).
  • Test installers for Fedora 37
  • Test installers for Ubuntu 22.04, 23.04
  • Test installers for Debian 12
  • WINDOWS:
  • Use Windows Explorer to open %WinDir%System32configSystemprofileAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsINetCache. If it is empty, copy any file there. Open BleachBit with admnistrator privileges, and clean Internet Explorer - Cache. Verify the file was removed. (1031)
  • If c:windows.old does not exist, create it. Then use BleachBit to clean System - Windows Updates, and verify it was removed. (1031).

New in BleachBit 4.4.2 (Jan 25, 2023)

  • CHANGES:
  • These are the changes since version 4.4.0:
  • Separate the cleaning option for site preferences from history (reported by corobin, fixed by ebaldridge).
  • Disable the auto-hide behavior for scrollbars (reported by banaagravrommel).
  • Report zero bytes as "0B" instead of just "0" (thanks to livingentity).
  • Clarify scope of cache cleaning for Discord (thanks to unknowntrojan).
  • Specific to Windows
  • Fix unreadable text for many languages, including Chinese and Japanese (first reported by huastone2018).
  • Fix broken scrollbar (reported first by banaagravrommel, fixed by rados).
  • Correct search pattern in Winapp2.ini (reported by MoscaDotTo, fixed by rados).
  • Honor Winapp2.ini ExcludeKey in certain scenarios (reported by livingentity, fixed by rados).
  • Show Winapp2.ini group names for Internet Explorer, Vivaldi, and Brave (thanks to livingentity).
  • Allow pasting a pathname when browsing for folder (thanks to Bozhidar-A).
  • Add option to silent installer for skipping desktop icon (requested by teknowledgist, fixed by rados).
  • Do not create shortcut to uninstaller as a best practice (suggested by craigacgomez).
  • Build font cache during installation to avoid delay during first start of application. At the end of installation while there is a black window with the title fc-cache.exe, you may notice a delay: this normally lasts about one minute, but on some systems it will take longer. It depends largely on the speed of the storage device (SSD/HDD) and the number of fonts.
  • Fix shredding through integration with the Windows Explorer context menu (reported by tlhulse, fixed by rados).
  • Show a splash screen (thanks to rados).
  • Update embedded SQLite from 3.35 to 3.36.

New in BleachBit 3.0 (Oct 28, 2019)

  • 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 (2.7.15), gettext (0.20.1), SQLite (3.28), and GTK (3.24).
  • 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$%.

New in BleachBit 2.3 Beta (Oct 10, 2019)

  • Verify it does not delete the Bluetooth daemon directory (issue 572).
  • Test new distributions: Debian 10 and Ubuntu 19.04.

New in BleachBit 2.2 (Mar 21, 2019)

  • To shred paths from the clipboard, open your operating system's file browser, and copy some files to the clipboard. In BleachBit, click File - Shred Paths from Clipboard. Unlike drag-and-drop, this still works on Windows when running as administrator.
  • Major cleaning improvements for Google Chrome, Chromium, and Firefox.
  • Clean modern versions of Opera based on Chromium.
  • Wipe free space from the command line with the new command --wipe-free-space (idea from Thomas).
  • Improve startup time of application. On some systems, it can be significant.
  • Increase resolution of application icon (thanks to totalCaesar659).
  • Add cleaner for Waterfox (thanks to danielk43).
  • Clean more of aMule (thanks to Pere Orga).
  • Fix: deep scan crashed when encountering paths with special characters (reported by thecsw).
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Add packages for Fedora 28, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 18.10.
  • Improve AppData registration (thanks to Harald H).
  • Clean more localizations (thanks to Tristan Stenner).
  • Fix: notifications on Gnome (thanks to Djaler).
  • Fix: percent symbol was not allowed in whitelist path (reported by bbusr).
  • Fix: memory could not be cleaned when swap was larger than 16 GiB (reported by apd_1985).
  • Fix: run BleachBit without X display, such as in cron (reported by isleno).
  • More:
  • Do you have Bitcoins? You can now donate crypocurrency (idea from spiritglove).
  • Do you use PGP? You can now verify the BleachBit keys on keybase.io (idea from ofereitan).
  • Improve support for FreeBSD and OpenBSD (thanks to luoliyan).
  • Add and improve many cleaners in the CleanerML repository, which is a separate download from BleachBit. (Special thanks to Tobias B. Besemer for the most contributions.)
  • Set the web site bleachbit.org to use HSTS for increased security.
  • Developers:
  • Move the Firefox cleaning rules from Python code to CleanerML to make it easier for people to contribute without knowing how to write Python code.
  • Add powerful multi-value variable system to CleanerML. This makes it easier to write, maintain, and verify cleaners. It also makes it easier to share cleaning rules across operating systems and for similar applications, such as Google Chrome and Chromium. See the documentation.
  • Add os attribute to the running, value, and action elements in CleanerML to limit by operating system (suggesed by cfoellmann).

New in BleachBit 2.0 (Feb 28, 2018)

  • Add drag-and-drop support (thanks to contractor Pavel). Try dropping files onto the main application window.
  • Fix preservation of thumbnails on Google Chrome and Chromium .
  • Fix error Favicons is version 36 or 38 when cleaning Google Chrome and Chromium.
  • Clean site engagement history on Google Chrome and Chromium.
  • Enable secure delete for SQLite.
  • Fix DatabaseError: no such table: moz_favicons for some Firefox profiles.
  • Use HTTPS encryption when automatically checking for software updates.
  • The bleachbit.org web site requires HTTPS encryption.
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Add journald cleaner (thanks to tstenner).
  • Add software categories to bleachbit.desktop (thanks to Hugo Lefeuvre).
  • Add appdata.xml file for Linux app stores (thanks to Mailaender).
  • Call apt-get command for apt clean to respect the dpkg lock (reported by Danilo Piazzalunga).
  • Whitelist Bluetooth daemon (reported by Timo Ollech).
  • Fix error when cleaning APT autoremove (reported by vladislavyuzbekov).
  • Fix purging of GTK recently used resources list.
  • Use XDG base directory specification in cleaners (thanks to Alexander Schlarb).
  • Resolve symlink for checking whitelist (repored by Vladimir Chapaikin).
  • Rename the XChat cleaner to Hexchat (thanks to ROCKNROLLKID).
  • On Debian/Ubuntu switch from su-to-root to PolicyKit (thanks in part to Martin Cigorraga).
  • Improve Liferea cleaner (reported by Theatre-X).
  • Add Ubuntu 16.10 and 17.04 .deb packages
  • Add Fedora 25 and 26 .rpm packages
  • Add OpenSUSE Leap 42.x .rpm packages
  • Drop packages for EOL distributions.
  • Specific to Windows:
  • Improve accuracy of wiping specific files on Windows by using special Windows APIs (thanks to contractor Peter Marshall).
  • Improve the handling of Unicode filenames (thanks to contractor Marco Lagi).
  • Restart Windows Explorer with normal privileges when cleaning thumbnails (reported by White).
  • Do not empty the recycle bin on Windows in preview mode (reported by Guilherme Lino).
  • Fix allegedly "mark for deletion" when not administrator on Windows.
  • Fix deletion of locked files.
  • Improve detection of running processes (reported by Race/relay12).
  • Update NSIS installer version 2.51 to 3.0
  • Add Unicode support to installer and uninstaller
  • Upgrade Python runtime from version 2.5 to 2.7
  • Update GTK+ runtime from version 2.16 to 2.22.
  • Shrink size of installer (thanks in part to contractor Maxim Khon)
  • Switch to Windows-style environment variables (like %AppData%) in CleanerML.
  • Fix reporting of local_cleaners_dir in Diagnostics dialog (reported by dvdbane).
  • Improve management of false positive reports from antivirus software.
  • Specific to Mac OS X (Darwin):
  • Improve support for basic functions (thanks to Matt Hardcastle).
  • Note: At this time there is neither a GUI nor an installer package.
  • Development:
  • Refactor the build system for Windows to work on many systems including Appveyor (thanks in part to contractor boussaffawalid).
  • Refactor unit tests (thanks to tstenner).
  • Prepare code to work with Python 3 (thanks to tstenner).
  • Combine Coveralls reports from Windows and Linux for better reporting of code coverage.
  • Remove Python 2.5 support. Require Python 2.6 or Python 2.7
  • Move some repositories to the new bleachbit organization on GitHub.
  • Within minutes of each code commit, publish a Windows build to the new site ci.bleachbit.org.

New in BleachBit 1.12 (Jul 5, 2016)

  • Fix error Favicons is version 32 with Google Chrome 51 (reported by Holger)
  • Fix cleaning of Thumbnails in new Chromium and Google Chrome (reported by ineuw, patrick)
  • Fix crash with corrupt BleachBit.ini (reported by BitBleacher)
  • Fix error UNIQUE constraint failed error cleaning Firefox (reported by danjackson1 and gravy45)
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Update EasyTAG cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update Epiphany cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update Evolution cleaner (thanks to skquinn)
  • Update GNOME cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update KDE cleaner for KDE 4 on openSUSE (thanks to Mailaender)
  • Update Rhythmbox cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update Thumbnails cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update Transmission cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Update X11 cleaner (thanks to devmapper0)
  • Switch from GnomeVFS, which is deprecated, to GIO (reported by MM)
  • Do not repeat Google Chrome cache in preview (reported by Daniel Che)
  • Fix retention of translations for Chinese
  • Whitelist iBus Pinyin (reported by Josiah Hunter)
  • Add .deb package for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
  • Add .rpm package for Fedora 24.
  • Specific to Windows:
  • Fix cleaning of files with dollar sign ($) in name
  • Support ExcludeKey filter in Winapp2.ini (reported by 212eta)
  • Fix support for the pattern *.extension with FileKey in Winapp2.ini (reported by 212eta)
  • Downgrade exception notice for getting special folders (reported by timvandermeij)
  • Make regex filter in CleanerML case insensitive on Windows
  • Fix error [Errno 2] No such file or directory when cleaning Windows Explorer - Thumbnails more than once in a row
  • Fix the harmless error Error in execution of Command to delete C:Windowstemp_avast_AvastLock.txt with Avast antivirus
  • Update SQLite.dll 3.8.0.2 to 3.11.1 (suggested by brahmastra2016).
  • Update NSIS to 2.51, which hardens the installer against DLL hijacking
  • Resolved false positive Packer.Generic!c with AegisLab antivirus
  • Submit BleachBit for whitelisting with ESET antivirus to address slowness when running with ESET (reported by captaincackle)
  • Development:
  • Add type attribute to CleanerML
  • Add new action process to CleanerML to run external commands
  • Add wholeregex/nwholeregex filters to CleanerML
  • Move GitHub repositories bleachbit-misc and winapp2.ini to the new BleachBit organization in GitHub. More will follow.

New in BleachBit 1.10 (Jan 4, 2016)

  • Clean passwords on Firefox version 32+.
  • Clean Google Chrome cookies for non-default profiles.
  • Clean more autofill on Google Chrome (reported by pcdoctor01). If you are logged in to Google Chrome, it may automatically restore some of these values from your online Google account unless you disable the option Show addresses and credit cards from Google Payments in the autofill page of Google Chrome settings.
  • Add size column to side tree control (thanks to Ivor Hewitt).
  • BleachBit 1.9.3 on Windows 10 showing Firefox preview
  • Add an option to show file sizes as IEC units (1 KiB = 1024 bytes) instead of SI units (1 kB = 1000 bytes; thanks to Tristan Stenner).
  • BleachBit 1.9.3 on Windows 10 showing the Preferences dialog
  • Speed up identification of files using regular expressions by 5% to 50%
  • Allow relative paths with --shred command line argument (reported by Eva Putnam).
  • Add descriptions for cleaners (thanks to theatre-x).
  • Fix resizing of preference dialog (thanks to Anton Bobov).
  • Warn when deleting passwords on Firefox (reported by Theatre-X).
  • Accept abbreviations T and F in bleachbit.ini configuration (reported by Ken Wallace).
  • Show a user-friendly error message when checking for updates fails because of a network error (reported by Gary).
  • Improve logging of errors. Some errors are more informative, and on Windows, errors are unlikely to cause a popup message about bleachbit.exe.log.
  • The primary download mirror now secures connections using HTTPS. (This is in addition to the digital signatures on Windows executables and PGP-signed hashes.)
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Clean more localizations (thanks to Tristan Stenner).
  • Add localization codes (thanks to Tristan Stenner).
  • Add .rpm installation package for Fedora 22.
  • Fix memory cleaning on Ubuntu 15.10 and other distributions (reported by Richard Pearse).
  • Fix harmless error that localizations.xml is unusable (thanks to Tristan Stenner).
  • Do not show localizations at the base level (reported by BBUser).
  • Do not show Windows Explorer cleaner on Linux (reported by Tomás F. L.).
  • Fulfill Fedora license file location change.
  • Do not delete xauth under KDE (reported by mike).
  • Remove deprecated key encoding in bleachbit.desktop.
  • Drop support for Mandriva, which is dead.
  • Do not show cleaner is unusable message in the console (except when debug mode is enabled or in non-final releases).
  • Specific to Windows:
  • Show the User Access Control on Windows 10. This helps elevate BleachBit to administrator privileges. (reported by Mike L.).
  • Fix handling of Windows 10 in Winapp2.ini in DetectOS= .
  • Avoid error pop-up message when exiting application after cleaning non-removable directory (reported by ineuw, goingoin, michael54854 ).
  • Avoid pop-up error message when exiting application after exhaust rename.
  • Fix cleaning of MRU for Adobe Reader versions 5-11 (reported by Arkwright).
  • Update to NSIS installer to version 2.50.
  • Fix error in same_partition(...) when Microsoft Office Starter 2010 is installed, which creates an inaccessible virtual drive Q: (reported by goingoin).
  • Add a new shortcut BleachBit No UAC, which starts BleachBit without requesting administrator privileges using the User Access Control dialog.
  • BleachBit 1.9.3 beta in the Windows 10 start menu
  • Remove an extra shortcut from the Start menu.
  • Development:
  • CleanerML respects the cleaner-level os attribute filter.
  • CleanerML supports negative regular expressions using the nregex option. Files which match this pattern will be ignored.
  • Track code coverage on coveralls.io. This underestimates coverage because although Windows code is automatically tested, it is not yet counted here.
  • Continuously run unit tests on Windows using AppVeyor for earlier detection of errors.
  • Move end-user documentation to GitHub Pages, so you can edit the documentation by submitting pull requests to its repository.
  • ROCKNROLLKID has been managing Winapp2.ini updates for over two years.
  • List of bugs targeted to BleachBit version 1.10
  • List of code changes.

New in BleachBit 1.8 (Jun 20, 2015)

  • In Preferences, there is a new option "Confirm before delete" that disables the confirmation (thanks to codesomniare).
  • When BleachBit starts, the window is centered.
  • The tool "Shred Settings and Quit" in the File menu is fixed.
  • Added cleaning for Opera passwords (Linux support thanks to theatre-x).
  • Shrink storage size of BleachBit icon.
  • Add descriptions to many cleaners (thanks to theatre-x).
  • Add a new command line option --debug-log that logs debug messages to a file.
  • Replace hard-coded localizations cleaning system with CleanerML entries (thanks to tstenner).
  • Whitelist /tmp/fsa for FSArchiver (reported by Max Miliaan).
  • Suppress GTK+ warning in console (thanks to iliaselmatani).

New in BleachBit 1.6 (Nov 19, 2014)

  • Google Chrome: fix error "Favicons is version 29"
  • Google Chrome: clean application cache directory.
  • Google Chrome and Chromium: in the Preferences (JSON) file clean a list of HTTP servers that used SPDY, which can be used to track servers to which the browser was connected
  • Firefox: clean more session restore files
  • Firefox: clean bookmark backups using a new option called Backup.
  • The auto-hide option, which was removed in version 1.0, is available again.
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Google Chrome: delete Sync Data Backup
  • Chromium: delete application cache directory
  • Print a message when root account is being cleaned to avoid confusion
  • Whitelist more KDE IPC files under /tmp/ to fix problem launching BleachBit as root

New in BleachBit 1.4 (Sep 10, 2014)

  • Firefox: Fix DatabaseError: no such table: moz_hosts
  • Firefox: Purge the table moz_hosts in places.sqlite for the option url_history
  • Firefox: Delete Necko Predictive Network Actions
  • Firefox: Delete more session restore files
  • Google Chrome: fix error cleaning autofill_dates
  • Adobe Reader: use wildcards instead of specific versions (thanks to theatre-x)
  • Clean netMRL history in VLC media player (thanks to tiemay)
  • Clean GIMP version 2.8 (thanks to tiemay)
  • Improve support for Liferea (thanks to Lars Windolf)
  • Specific to Linux / Unix:
  • Pass control of the ~/.cache/mozilla directory from the System - Cache cleaner to the Firefox - Cache cleaner (LP#1295826)
  • Clean additional locale directories (thanks to tstenner)
  • Clean .mask files in Easytag (thanks to tiemay)
  • Clean more history in the Links web browser (thanks to tiemay)
  • Add packages for CentOS 7 and RHEL 7
  • Specific to Windows:
  • Winapp2.ini: on 64-bit systems expand %ProgramFiles% and %CommonProgramFiles% to the 32-bit versions in DetectFile= and FileKey=
  • Winapp2.ini: support wildcards in DetectFile#=
  • Winapp2.ini: support numbers in environment variable names
  • System Information: show ProgramFiles and ProgramW6432
  • Avoid a crash when starting on Windows with an exception in setting environment variables

New in BleachBit 1.3 Beta (Aug 13, 2014)

  • Google Chrome should clean thoroughly and without errors.
  • Firefox should clean thoroughly (see LP#1326626) and without errors.
  • Adobe Reader support
  • GIMP 2.8 temporary files
  • Liferea support
  • Test on CentOS 7
  • Firefox cache should be cleaned by the Firefox - Cache and not System - Cache.
  • Easytag history
  • Links2 (web browser) history
  • VLC network streams history (see GH#15)

New in BleachBit 1.2 (Jun 9, 2014)

  • When overwriting free disk space is aborted, use a fallback system to make sure the temporary files are deleted before BleachBit exits abnormally; store temporary files in standard temporary file directories; and speed up on Linux.
  • Expose Mozilla URL history (places.sqlite) cleaner to CleanerML, so better custom cleaners can be written for Mozilla-based browsers.
  • Update Warzone 3.1 for Windows.
  • Better find Firefox profiles (LP#1287489; patch by Gogeden)
  • Add warnings to some cleaners about deleting passwords (thanks to theatre-x).
  • All of BleachBit is now on GitHub across four repositories.
  • Specific to Linux / Unix;
  • Add cleaner for APT package lists.
  • Update Konqueror cleaner (thanks to tiemay).
  • Update Debian package for Debian and Ubuntu.
  • Add Fedora 20 RPM package.
  • Add Ubuntu 14.04 DEB package.
  • Do not crash on startup for new platforms (in this case, for FreeBSD) .

New in BleachBit 1.1 Beta (May 19, 2014)

  • Wipe free disk space. BleachBit should not be unresponsive, and when it is done, there should be about the same amount of free disk space available. Try various file systems: ext3, ext4, FAT, NTFS
  • Clean Warzone 3.1
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Test on Fedora 20
  • Test on Ubuntu 14.04
  • Clean APT package lists
  • Clean Konqueror
  • Specific to Windows:
  • During installation disable shred integration. Then right click on a file in Windows Explorer and see the option is unavailable. Reinstall with the option enabled and verify the option is there.

New in BleachBit 1.0 (Nov 16, 2013)

  • The command line option --shred now shreds arbitrary files.
  • Add Octave cleaner
  • Add Warzone 2100 cleaner
  • Clean recently played in VLC (thanks to nolme/Vincent DUVERNET - Nolmë Informatique)
  • Google Chrome: Fix errors "Favicons is version 26" and "DatabaseError: no such column: full_path"
  • Google Chrome: delete more cache
  • Remove auto-hide option. (Before, it was a default.)
  • Add SQLite3 cleaner
  • Adobe Flash: clean NativeCache

New in BleachBit 1.0 Beta 2 (Nov 15, 2013)

  • Clean Adobe Flash
  • Clean Octave
  • Clean Warzone 2100
  • Clean Google Chrome with the "overwrite contents" option enabled. Verify there are no errors, and the bookmark icons are preserved.
  • Clean VLC with the "overwrite contents" option enabled.
  • Run a command line like this to delete a specific file or folder:bleachbit --shred /some/filename
  • Clean SQLite3

New in BleachBit 0.8.8 (Jun 16, 2011)

  • In Firefox, delete more session restore
  • In Firefox, delete site-specific preferences
  • In Firefox, delete input history.
  • In Firefox, delete more URL history.
  • In Google Chrome and Chromium, properly delete HTML5 cookies without deleting preferences for extensions (LP#732567)
  • In Google Chrome and Chromium, delete the Databases.db files
  • In Google Chrome and Chromium, delete favicons (except those that have bookmarks)
  • In Google Chrome delete more history: the DNS prefetching host referral list
  • In Opera, delete session backup
  • Specific to Linux:
  • Fix crash starting as administrator on Ubuntu 11.04.
  • Support Seamonkey 2.0 (pointed out by Ed Hurst and Gogeden)
  • Do not delete /var/tmp/kdecache to avoid crashing KDE (KDE#271889)
  • Fix crash when changing options when Linux packager has disabled online updates (LP#715286)
  • Require PyGTK version 2.14 or later

New in BleachBit 0.8.8 Beta 2 (Jun 10, 2011)

  • This version better cleans Firefox, Google Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Thunderbird.
  • Translations were updated and added.

New in BleachBit 0.8.7 (Jan 24, 2011)

  • BleachBit 0.8.7 improves command line support, imports winapp2.ini-style files allowing immediately for 440 additional cleaners on Windows, adds an Estonian translation, and more.
  • Be a fan of BleachBit on the new Facebook page.
  • Add command line option --preset which selects all the cleaners previously selected in the GUI.
  • When showing a warning, show which option generated the warning.
  • Specific to Linux
  • Support Thunderbird on openSUSE 11.3 thanks to Manfred Schwarb (LP#668231)
  • Fix wrong button label when adding folders for overwrite disk space and for whitelist (pointed out by jtarin)
  • When cleaning localizations, show warning to point user to configuration
  • Packagers: BleachBit will try to use the built-in json module on Python 2.6+ instead of simplejson, which is still required on Python 2.5.

New in BleachBit 0.8.5 (Jan 3, 2011)

  • This version cleans many more traces of Internet usage in Google Chrome and Chromium (even data the browsers themselves cannot clean).
  • It also cleans more of Opera and Firefox.
  • Translations were updated.

New in BleachBit 0.8.4 (Dec 19, 2010)

  • When deep scan was enabled, BleachBit 0.8.3 would freeze with the progress bar displaying the name of the last cleaner (so it could be any one of 90 different names). Sorry!
  • In addition to fixing this bug (of course), new automatic tests will prevent this from happening in the future. From the beginning, BleachBit has extensively used automatic tests to ensure quality.

New in BleachBit 0.8.3 (Dec 13, 2010)

  • This version wipes free disk space significantly faster.
  • To maximize privacy, it changes the order of operations: general cleaning, deep scan, RAM and swap, and free disk space.
  • It cleans much more of Opera, adds menu options for shredding folders and wiping free disk space, fixes an important bug, adds a Lithuanian translation, and updates 18 other translations.

New in BleachBit 0.8.2 (Nov 16, 2010)

  • Securely wipe filenames when deleting individual files and directories
  • More securely wipe filenames when wiping free disk space
  • Expand and fix vacuuming Google Chrome 7
  • Specific to Linux bonus pack (separate download)
  • Fix bonus pack not installing on Ubuntu 10.10
  • Clean Xfce xfrun4 command history (thanks to nodiscc)
  • Clean Battle for Wesnoth (thanks to Thibault Févry)
  • New documentation: Shred files and wipe disks

New in BleachBit 0.8.0 (Jun 6, 2010)

  • Add feature to whitelist files and folders, so they will not be deleted or modified
  • Add Tamil translation
  • Add Faroese translation
  • Support Thunderbird 3 as found on Ubuntu 10.04
  • Delete recent documents in GNOME 2.28 - 2.30

New in BleachBit 0.7.4 (Apr 16, 2010)

  • BleachBit cleans its own settings for privacy
  • Use EIC binary prefixes (1KiB=1000 bytes)
  • Add Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) package
  • Clean WordPad
  • Shrink Windows installer by 500KiB
  • Fix many bugs
  • Add Low German translation
  • Update 25 translations

New in BleachBit 0.7.4 Beta (Apr 5, 2010)

  • Fix many bugs
  • Update translations
  • Add Low German translation
  • New privacy enhancement

New in BleachBit 0.7.3 (Feb 21, 2010)

  • Clean Thunderbird
  • Clean Screenlets
  • Add Asturian translation
  • Updates 12 other translations

New in BleachBit 0.7.2 (Dec 1, 2009)

  • Clean Konqueror history, cache, and cookies
  • Improve notification for Linux
  • Clean Paint and more of WinRAR and Adobe Reader 6 on Windows
  • Expose system information for reporting bugs
  • Fix several bugs
  • Update 19 translations

New in BleachBit 0.7.1 (Nov 10, 2009)

  • Clean Apache logs and XBMC Media Center, and Windows 7 jump lists
  • Delete more of Opera history, Safari history, RealPlayer history, Emesene cache
  • Improve usability and appearance
  • Fix bugs
  • Add Slovenian and Japanese translations
  • Update 18 other translations

New in BleachBit 0.7.1 Beta (Nov 2, 2009)

  • Improve appearance
  • Improve usability
  • Fix bugs
  • Improve cleaning of Apache logs, Emesene cache, Opera cache, Safari history, RealPlayer history, Windows 7 jump list
  • Make BleachBit portable (for Windows) fully portable
  • Add Slovenian translation

New in BleachBit 0.7.0 (Oct 22, 2009)

  • Add deep scan feature to find widely-scatted junk files such as Thumbs.db and .DS_Store
  • Optionally automatically start BleachBit when computer starts
  • Wipe memory and swap on Linux
  • Add or improve 23 cleaning options
  • Add Belarusian translation
  • Update 22 other translations

New in BleachBit 0.7.0 Beta 2 (Oct 18, 2009)

  • Fix many bugs
  • Add Belarusian translation
  • Clear GNOME Run history
  • Delete search history in GNOME Search Tool

New in BleachBit 0.7.0 Beta (Oct 14, 2009)

  • Add deep scan feature to find widely-scattered junk files
  • Wipe RAM and swap.
  • Delete Adobe Flash asset cache, KDE recent documents list, Adobe Reader temporary files , Google Earth ache, IcedTea cache, Gwenview recent documents list, sqlite3 command history, MySQL CLI command history, Midnight Comamnder usage history, Metacity sessions
  • Clean more of Google Chromium, X11, and Google Chrome.
  • Add option to start BleachBit with computer.
  • Introduce second generation of CleanerML with regular expression support, file truncation, and more flexible file matching.
  • Update many translations.
  • Fix bugs

New in BleachBit 0.6.5 (Oct 1, 2009)

  • This release vacuums Google Chrome, deletes Google Chrome 3's history, and cleans the Emesene cache.
  • It clean Adanaxis, Gnome Art Manager, Notify OSD, PDFedit, Phatch, PlayOnLinux, system logs, Virt-manager, and X-Moto (all part of the new bonus cleaners package).
  • It adds a portable package for Windows, updates 18 translations, fixes bugs, and expand the unit tests significantly.

New in BleachBit 0.6.5 Beta (Sep 26, 2009)

  • Vacuum Google Chrome's fragmented SQLite databases. How much space do you recover? The safe browsing bloom file usually gives me 5MB and the other files about 250KB.
  • Clean Google Chrome version 3's usage history
  • On Linux (now in addition to Windows), BleachBit should refuse to clean Google Chrome while it is running
  • When BleachBit 0.6.4 encounters an error deleting a file, it may not delete some of the next files (bug#435246). BleachBit 0.6.5 should skip the error and continue deleting the next file.
  • BleachBit should properly delete Windows registry named values for Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player, and TeamViewer. This should fix a bug where BleachBit 0.6.4 deleted the whole key instead of just the named value. You should see some registry entries marked in angle brackets like .
  • BleachBit is now portable on Linux and Windows. It should find its own files (cleaners, icon, etc) regardless of the current working directory in which it was started. On Windows, this means you can just unzip BleachBit to a portable USB drive or run it from your desktop without installation. On Linux, it's now even easier to run from the source. (You never had to compile BleachBit, so it was also fairly easy to run from source on Linux.)
  • Look for regressions in previewing and deleting files and performing special operations including wiping free disk space, APT, Yum, vacuuming, OpenOffice.org, and Windows registry keys.
  • If you package BleachBit for a repository, please check your launcher. BleachBit 0.6.5 uses some absolute imports instead of relative imports. If it starts, the new imports work.

New in BleachBit 0.6.4 (Sep 16, 2009)

  • Add command line interface for automation scripts and headless operation
  • When zeroing free disk space and the user closes the application window, quickly stop zeroing the free disk space (instead of continuing in the background).
  • When manually shredding files from the menu, ignore the preferences option regarding overwriting files. (Now always overwrite them.)
  • Display more summary information at the end of the log: the number of files deleted, special operations, and errors.
  • Clean Opera 10.0 final build.
  • Improve the appearance of the toolbar
  • Enhance the unit tests
  • Fix small bugs
  • Add Malay translation
  • Update 17 other translations
  • Support NetBSD with fewer downstream patches
  • Shrink the Windows installer

New in BleachBit 0.6.3 (Aug 28, 2009)

  • Clear unused Linux inodes on ext3 and ext4 systems (and try on all others) to hide previously deleted filenames, file sizes, and other metadata.
  • Fix two bugs.
  • Delete Microsoft Windows system log files.
  • Update 16 translations.

New in BleachBit 0.6.1 (Aug 17, 2009)

  • Wipe free space on hard drive to hide deleted files
  • Cleans Nautilus and gPodder
  • Clean more of Yum
  • Fixes several bugs
  • Add Croatian, Korean, Ukrainian, and Thai translations
  • Update 18 other translations.

New in BleachBit 0.6.0 (Aug 3, 2009)

  • Clean Liferea, Downloader for X (d4x), EasyTag, Evolution, Opera 10 beta, and Windows Recycle Bin.
  • Clean more of Adobe Reader, APT, Internet Explorer, Opera, Pidgin, and Windows Media Player.
  • Refuse to clean certain applications while they are running.
  • Enhance CleanerML to support SQLite vacuuming, running process detection, APT, and a plugin-like system for new special actions.
  • Add Galician, Indonesian, and Romanian translations.
  • Update 18 other translations.

New in BleachBit 0.5.4 (Jul 16, 2009)

  • Automatically hide irrelevant cleaners.
  • Cleans SeaMonkey; Adobe Reader MRU's; Opera download history, URL history, and current session; X Window System session errors; Google Toolbar; Microsoft Office MRU's; WinRAR MRU's; and more Windows MRU's
  • Fix a bug that deleted OpenOffice.org extensions
  • Add translations for Hindi, Norwegian Bokmal, and Simplified Chinese
  • Updates translations for 12 other languages.

New in BleachBit 0.5.3 (Jul 1, 2009)

  • 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.

New in BleachBit 0.5.2 (Jun 22, 2009)

  • Add cleaners for Pidgin, Miro, Nexuiz, and gedit, Yahoo! Messenger, and Winamp.
  • Clean more of Firefox, Vuze/Azureus, OpenOffice.org, aMSN, espeak, and GNOME's trash. * Add Dutch and Hungarian translations.
  • Update Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, German, Italian, and Slovak translations.
  • Fix bugs regarding Firefox, cleaning resulting in size increases, shredding write protected files, compatibility with Python 2.6.
  • Many fixes for the new Windows port.

New in BleachBit 0.5.1 (Jun 9, 2009)

  • Securely shreds any file to prevent file recovery.
  • Warn when deleting Firefox's Places.
  • Clean Google Chrome and gFTP on Linux.
  • Clean more files of the Skype chat logs.
  • Clean Java, Opera, RealPlayer, and X-Chat on Windows.
  • Expand the built-in whitelist for TrueCrypt, PulseAudio, WINE, and VirtualBox.
  • Fix bugs.
  • Update translations for Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Serbian, and German.

New in BleachBit 0.5.0 (May 30, 2009)

  • Add support for Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and 7.
  • Add convenient Windows installer (with all the dependencies included) and uninstaller .
  • Add cleaners for Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Safari.
  • Clean more cookies created by Macromedia/Adobe Flash.
  • Enhance CleanerML to hide cleaners on unsupported operating systems (such as hiding WINE and Rhythmbox on Windows).
  • Fixed bug "Bookmarks in Firefox can't be saved.".
  • Change the cleaning and preview system from a thread to an idle function to support Windows. One nice side effect is closing BleachBit (with the X in the corner) during a cleaning operation immediately closes BleachBit and stops further cleaning. Another side effect is this change facilitates command line invocation of BleachBit (to be added later).
  • Add Brazilian Portuguese translation thanks to A. Gabriel.
  • Add Czech and Slovak translations thanks to Roman Horník.
  • Add Serbian translation thanks to turncoat.
  • Update Arabic translation thanks to MaXer.
  • Update Danish translation thanks to Jimmy Frydkær Jensen.
  • Update French translation thanks to Mathieu Pasquet.

New in BleachBit 0.4.2 (May 11, 2009)

  • Clean Adobe Reader 9.0's cache (in addition to previous versions of Reader).
  • Whitelist paths in /var/log/ to prevent deleting important files on Slackware.
  • Update French, German, and Finnish translations.

New in BleachBit 0.4.1 (Apr 13, 2009)

  • Fixed bug "BleachBit complains loudly if X server is not running" in Ubuntu and Debian.
  • Fixed bug "Crash if LANG is not set in the environment."
  • Added new translations: Catalan, Portuguese, Hebrew, Italian, Finnish, German. (Only 38 of 139 strings are translated to Finnish, so you could say this translation is not yet finished.)
  • Updated French translation.

New in BleachBit 0.4.0 (Feb 24, 2009)

  • Introduce CleanerML, a system for creating cleaners in XML.
  • Add cleaners for aMSN, CrossOver Chromium (Google Chrome), ELinks, emesene, GL-117, Hippo OpenSim Viewer, Midnight Commander, Recoll, Rhythmbox, Tremulous, Vuze (formerly Azureus), and WINE.
  • Update Bulgarian, French, and Spanish translations.
  • Add Russian translation.

New in BleachBit 0.3.1 (Feb 4, 2009)

  • Clean the cache and temporary files of Acrobat Reader, GIMP, Google Earth, Second Life Viewer, and winetricks.
  • Clean Firefox version 3's URL history without deleting the entire places.sqlite file (which also contains bookmarks).
  • Clean more localizations.
  • Vacuum the Firefox databases (which becomes fragmented).
  • Fixed bug that blocked cleaning of some localizations for some using Ubuntu 8.04.
  • Fixed bug that prevented starting BleachBit when the language was not set.
  • Fixed bug that prevented cleaning of the clipboard.

New in BleachBit 0.3.0 (Jan 27, 2009)

  • Introduce cleaning of localizations: Go way behind localpurge, which only cleans some localizations and just for a few Linux distributions. BleachBit finds more files and works with all Linux distributions. Also, BleachBit is "safer" than localpurge because you must run BleachBit manually, and BleachBit allows you a preview.
  • Extend cleaning of recently used documents on Ubuntu 8.10 according to a new file standard.
  • Introduce a preferences dialog
  • Implement secure file shredding to hide file contents (to prevent data remanence) by overwriting files. It is effective in most operations (those which delete files) and on some file systems. The standard file system Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 is ext3 with data=ordered is compatible with shredding, but it is not effective in other situations including JFS, ReiserFS, and XFS. For more information, read the man page for shred.
  • Individually describe each operation option.
  • Use the actual size (not apparent size) of sparse files. This follows the default behavior of du instead of ls. Notice files are generally multiples of 4KB: even a 1B file generally occupies 4KB because of the file system allocates multiples of its block size.
  • Add new operation to clean clipboard.
  • Delete XChat logs in recent XChat version.
  • Fix bug that prevented some Firefox and Epiphany options from being used (i.e., some files were not deleted).
  • Fix handling of symlinks.
  • Create a menu option to launch BleachBit as root on Linux distributions for which installation packages are provided. Administrator privileges are necessary to purge localizations.
  • Add Bulgarian translation from Svetoslav Stefanov.
  • The smaller changes include:
  • When cleaning history for OpenOffice.org, also delete the cache.
  • Improve the text window (on the right) with markup (colors and text styles) and text wrapping.
  • Show tooltips on the toolbar.
  • Various bug fixes, optimizations, and improvements to the unit tests.
  • Enable searching and fix scrolling in the operations tree view.
  • Fix thread-related bug on Ubuntu 6.06.

New in BleachBit 0.2.1 (Jan 5, 2009)

  • Clean OpenOffice.org recent documents history (through a new system that performs operations more sophisticated than simply deleting a file)
  • Introduce application icon
  • Improve internationalization
  • Add first localization: Spanish
  • Fix conflict in packaging regarding 32-bit and 64-bit hosts
  • Show version in about dialog
  • Find RPM build directory a better way
  • Improve abbreviation of bytes (for example, show 123,457 bytes as 120.6KB)
  • Fix some small bugs

New in BleachBit 0.2.0 (Dec 30, 2008)

  • Clean broken personal menu entries (.desktop files)
  • Clean Firefox session restore (crashed sessions)
  • Clean /var/tmp/ when cleaning /tmp/
  • Clean VIM's .viminfo (which contains the "clipboard" and a history including commands and files)
  • Enable Startup Notification (a visual notification to show the application is starting)
  • Improve .deb and .rpm packaging. In particular, all .deb packages now are "all" architecture (instead of i386 and amd64).
  • Introduce install packages for Mandriva and Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)