Changes since version 6.0.0
All Platforms
New Features
- Add cleaning support for Visual Studio Code, Codium, Antigravity, Cursor, Windsurf, and Devin
- Add support for multiple browser profiles on Chrome and Edge
- Add cleaner for Claude Code
- Add DNS cache cleaner
- Clean AI models from Google Chrome
- When shredding a filename, reduce data remnants and speed up shredding files
- Convert Apache OpenOffice (formerly called OpenOffice.org) cleaner from Python to CleanerML
- Add options to deep scan for developers: venv, pycache, node_modules, and .angular
- Clear clipboard after shredding files from paste operation
User interface and performance
- Limit the line width of long warning text
- Improve the logic that triggers the notice during startup about Expert Mode
- During deep scan, skip directories listed in the keep list to improve the speed of scanning
- Stop trying to rename files when an error is not retryable
- Respond to keyboard interrupt (Ctrl+C) when shredding filenames
- Warn when the configuration file is not writable
- Disable the chaff controls while generating chaff
Bug Fixes
- If there are errors reading the cookie keep list, then it will abort the cookie cleaning process to avoid removing important cookies
- Fix: crash in recognition of local cleaners
- Fix: GUI stops loading if recognition fails
- Fix: cleaner loading with invalid data types
- Fix crash with certain Unicode on the CLI
- Fix: escape invalid Unicode in system information output
- Fix: allow Unicode in keep/custom lists
- Fix: avoid losing custom theme icons in Vivaldi by not deleting files in the VivaldiThumbnails folder
- Fix DuplicateOptionError when restoring warning preferences
- Improve handling of symlinks in keep list (whitelist)
- Improve reliability when running external processes without waiting
Windows
New Features
- Add %WindowsSystem% variable for c:\windows\system32 and c:\windows\sysnative
- Use native APIs to clear clipboard on Windows
- Shrink the installer and installed size. Re-enable UPX file compression and remove unneeded files. These changes reduced the installer by 700KB, the portable zip by 3MB, and the installed size by 22MB (47%)
Bug Fixes
- Fix potential security issue where a malicious actor could delete arbitrary files when cleaning with elevated privileges (CVE-2026-55567). Issue identified by Zeze with TeamT5.
- Fix access denied errors when clearing the clipboard on Windows
- Fix crash with unpaired surrogate characters on CLI
- Fix anonymization of 8.3 short file names
- Fix handling of unpaired surrogates in keep/custom lists
- Improve robustness of splash screen
Other
- Update NSIS from 3.03 to 3.12 in AppVeyor CI
- Improve installer experience for unsupported Windows
Linux
New Features
- Add AppImage binary to run on most x86-64 Linux systems
- Improve detection of trash on Linux
- Clean Librewolf installed by official .deb
- Clean Transmission installed as flatpak
- Add cleaner for Profanity (chat client)
- Clean Flatpak localizations
Bug Fixes
- Handle disk quota exceeded (EDQUOT) when wiping a path
- Fix: could not run CLI as root under Wayland
- Improve exception handling with snap
- Fix: keep .desktop files whose Exec path is quoted
- Require XDG .desktop files to have 'Name' field
- Fix AppStream metadata
- Fix crash on startup when requests was not installed
- Add python3-requests as dependency in RPM and Debian packaging
- Read swapfile information as text
- Fix: drag and drop did not work on Wayland
- Fix detection of snap running
- Suppress ImportWarning (seen on older distribution)
- Handle BrokenPipeError in the CLI (for example, when piping to head)
Other changes
The download pages now show checksums inline at the bottom, rather than requiring the user to download a file. (All prior validation methods are still available.)
For Developers
- Add install-deps.sh to install user and developer dependencies
- Code changes to prepare for improved macOS support
- Run some Windows tests also with reduced privileges
- List of commits
- List of closed issues
Website & Documentation
- Major improvements to the documentation site at docs.bleachbit.org.
- The first localized pages on bleachbit.org in Spanish, Italian, and German cover the homepage, download, features, and help pages.
- Introduce server in Moscow localized in the Russian language.
