CCleaner 5.0 now available

Piriform, the company behind the popular CCleaner program for Windows and Android, released a preview version of CCleaner 5.0 recently that showcased the new interface of the application.

Today, the company released the final version of CCleaner and along with it all the other changes that it did not include in the interface demo version of the application.

Good news is that the program has not been changed at its core. It is still capable of cleaning temporary files and offers a number of system management related tools on top of that such as a startup manager or Registry Cleaner.

The new "improved" graphical user interface is the most visible change of CCleaner 5.0. It is using a flat design now which resembles programs running under Windows 8 or Windows 10.

While the design of the interface has changed, the layout has not. CCleaner displays the cleaner mode right away that allows you to select the applications and locations in Windows that you want analyzed and cleaned off of temporary files.

The Registry cleaner and the Tools section is listed there as well which means that veteran users of the program don't have to change how they use the program.

Probably the most interesting new feature of the new version is support for Google Chrome plugins. These plugins, apps and extensions, can be managed in the interface under Tools > Startup > Google Chrome.

There you find options to enable, disable or delete these programs. You may be surprised how many apps are installed in the browser that you have not installed yourself.

Note that CCleaner cannot disable or delete some of the files as they are protected by the browser. This means that you can only manage apps, extensions and plugins that don't ship with Chrome.

All remaining changes made in CCleaner 5.0 are under the hood changes. Performance has been improved according to Piriform, bugs have been fixed and some internal routines have been optimized as well.

Windows 8 and newer users get optimized 64-bit builds on top of that. It is unclear however what that means as it is not explained in the changelog.

Version 5.0 is fully compatible with CCEnhancer, a third-party tool that adds hundreds of temporary file locations to CCleaner.

On another note: Piriform added Active Monitoring to CCleaner some versions ago. CCleaner runs as a background task all the time with the feature enabled. If you don't want that, disable Active Monitoring in the program options under monitoring.

You may also want to disable the autostart entry of the program just to be on the safe side.

Verdict

CCleaner 5.0 is a minor upgrade feature-wise. Yes, it introduces a new interface and Chrome plugin management but that is about it.

It is still a great, many call it the best, program of its kind for Windows.