An open-source CCleaner alternative for Windows

Why people look for a CCleaner alternative

CCleaner is the tool most people reach for, and for years it did the job. But a few things push folks to look elsewhere: it is closed source, so you cannot see what it actually deletes; the installer has historically bundled extra software; the genuinely useful features (real-time monitoring, the duplicate finder, automatic updates) sit behind a paid tier; and in 2017 an official build was compromised and shipped malware to millions of users before it was caught.

None of that means CCleaner is unusable today. It means that for a tool with permission to delete files all over your system, a lot of people now want something they can actually inspect and easily reverse.

What matters in a cleaner you can trust

Sifty is built around the idea that a cleanup tool should be hard to misuse:

• Open source. Every line is on GitHub under the MIT license. The one function that can delete anything is about nine lines long, and you can read it.
• Dry-run by default. Every destructive command shows you exactly what it would remove first. Real changes need an explicit --apply.
• Recycle Bin, never permanent delete. All removals go through the Recycle Bin, and sifty undo restores the last clean.
• Protected paths. C:\Windows, Program Files and your profile root are refused outright. There is no --force flag to override that.
• Audit log. Every applied deletion is written to a timestamped log, so you always have receipts.

Sifty vs CCleaner, feature by feature

Where CCleaner is still the better fit

It would be dishonest to claim Sifty wins on everything. CCleaner is the right pick if:

• You want a polished graphical app and never touch a terminal. Sifty has a full-screen terminal UI (sifty tui), but it is not a classic point-and-click Windows app.
• You specifically want registry cleaning. Sifty deliberately does not scrub the registry, because the space saved is negligible and the risk of breaking things is real. CCleaner offers it; we think it is the wrong trade.
• You want a single brand your less-technical relatives already recognise. Familiarity has value, and Sifty is new.

Who Sifty is for

Sifty is built developer-first. It cleans the things developer machines actually accumulate, things a general-purpose cleaner ignores: stray node_modules folders, build output, Python caches, orphaned git worktrees, and WSL2 virtual disks that never give space back. Everything is scriptable with JSON output, and the engine is a reusable Python library. If you live on the command line, it will feel like home.

Switching is one command

There is nothing to migrate. Install Sifty alongside whatever you use today and start with the read-only commands, which cannot change anything:

PS C:\> sifty doctor      # check admin rights, winget, Ollama
PS C:\> sifty checkup     # one read-only scan across everything
PS C:\> sifty junk scan   # see reclaimable space, delete nothing

When you are ready to actually clean, add --apply and Sifty will ask before it moves anything to the Recycle Bin.