CCleaner 7.0 no longer supports Winapp2.ini

[APMichael]

Just a quick note and warning: the new (and unfortunately very poor) CCleaner 7.0 no longer supports the use of Winapp2.ini! The last working version is 6.39. (JMHO: A program that has been changed so fundamentally should be launched under a new name and as version 1.0...)

[bege10]

It is not only poor but incredibly nagging. I just uninstalled it and am testing BleachBit and HDCleaner. Bye bye after I don't know how many years.

[MoscaDotTo]

here's a portion PM I received on the CCleaner forums

Firstly to state that I don’t use winapp2 myself.
I’m not at all sure if or how it would integrate with the v7 Custom Clean.
However I have noticed something interesting and I do have a suggestion that someone might want to try.

After installing v7 Free on my Win10 laptop as an experiment I copied and pasted my backup of ‘ccleaner.ini’ into the new ‘…\Piriform\CCleaner 7’ folder.

v7 picked up as much as it could of my CCleaner settings, my custom cleaning rules, and my Includes and Excludes from the ccleaner.ini

At their own risk it might be worth someone experimenting and doing the same copy/paste job with a (perhaps small) winapp2.ini to see what the v7 Custom Clean would make of it?

my limited testing with CC7 didn't seem promising but maybe something to explore

[bege10]

That was the first thing I did after the update. But I didn't even find a place in the UI where the winapp2.ini entries could be displayed.

[MonfGeiger]

i just installed the new ccleaner into a Win 11 VM instance, and.........well, it does look modern, but holy christ does it pack in so much stuff it never NEEDED. if this is what ccleaner is now, im sticking with what i got, the OLD PERFECT version, and the winapp2.ini list curated to do good stuff

[MoscaDotTo]

Update:

It is possible to use winapp2.ini entries with CCleaner 7, but it requires some pretty big changes to the formatting and is implemented differently.

CCleaner 7's rules live inside ccleaner.ini now

Adding the following snippet to ccleaner.ini for CCleaner 7 produces a checkbox called custom-clean.name.Windows Camera, which functions as you would expect within CCleaner 7

[Windows Camera *]
ID=Windows Camera
Detect=HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows
FileKey1=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\AC|*|RECURSE
FileKey2=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\LocalCache|*|RECURSE
FileKey3=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\LocalState\AppData|*|RECURSE
FileKey4=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\LocalState\Cache|*|RECURSE
FileKey5=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\Settings|*.log*
FileKey6=%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.*Camera_*\TempState|*|RECURSE
RegKey1=HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData\Microsoft.Camera_8wekyb3d8bbwe\SearchHistory
Tags=ccwindows

In my limited testing, I couldn't find a way to remove the custom-clean.name from the UI, but I'm assuming this is a CCleaner bug for now.

CCleaner7 does seem to have extended some additional functionality to the provided scripting language, but I think investigating these features and their potential is secondary to creating a functional path forward for winapp2.ini and CCleaner 7

The good news: I think that with mostly straightforward changes to the base winapp2.ini, we can create a CCleaner 7 flavor which is functional.

The bad news: installing this flavor will require modifying ccleaner.ini (winapp2ool's Transmute function should work for automating this) instead of simply dropping winapp2.ini into the same folder.

[APMichael]

It is great that you have found a possible solution. Thank you very much for the time and effort you have put into this. I hope it will be worth it, as many people have turned away from CCleaner after the terrible version 7.0.

[LinguaOccultus]

It should not be forgotten, that CCleaner 7 is still in a very early state and has mostly negative reactions about it. I strongly suggest to use the last 6.x version until the new version is somewhere close to usable, but that will take many month more of work if they do not roll it back complete despite the mess it currently is. The old installers can still be found around the web, the last 6.x version to my knowledge was 6.39.11548.

It also has massive issues with deleting unintended items due to many reports on their forums. There is a guide to roll back to the older version there also: https://community.ccleaner.com/t/how-to-roll-back-from-v7-to-v6-39/156249

That way, you also can use Winapp2.ini like before while waiting when and if the new CCleaner version ever is normally usable.

[MoscaDotTo]

I've completed a good portion of the work required to support CCleaner 7. This is in addition to CCleaner v1-6(which I'll take to calling CCleaner "Classic"), not in place of. We'll see how CCleaner 7 develops over time and adjust our implementation as needed. Please continue to use whichever tool you most prefer!