CCleaner 7: How to Set Automatic Cleanings?

CCleaner for Windows
1

Up until now, I’ve set CCleaner to automatically run every time the browser is shut down. (I’m using CCleaner Pro). I didn’t even see it happen.

Since the upgrade to version 7, I don’t know if it is happening.

I manually start CCleaner and the first screen to appear is the “Health Check” screen.

So I change to the “Custom Clean” tab and run the cleaning. And then I manually close CCleaner.

Where is the setting to specify that CCleaner should run each time the browser is closed, and then close itself?

2

Sadly, it is missing (and missed by many). For now what you described is what’s there in ccleaner for the foreseeable futrure.

3

This is the primary feature for which I use CCleaner. Without the ability to clean the browser on exit, I won’t resubscribe at the end of this license period.

For now, I’m able to stay on v6 - if I continually fend off the automatic v7 upgrades. If anyone from Piriform reads these forums: please do not initiate automatic upgrades to v7 until it reaches feature parity with v6.

Thank you.

4

Hi @DavidB & @mannion,
At this time, CCleaner 7 does not have a Smart Cleaning option at the moment
We will be adding this feature in an update that will be released soon.

5

Thank you for your reply; that is good news, and I appreciate your sharing it with us.

I’ve done some research since reading @Nergal post above, with the expectation that Smart Cleaning would not be available in a reasonable timeframe. Along the way, I encountered several resources stating that the v6 option to clean the browser on exit was superfluous, and that simply using the browser’s native private/incognito mode was equivalent.

To clarify:

  • Does the CCleaner option to automatically clean browsers on exit provide additional functionality that the browsers’ native private mode does not?

If so, I’d appreciate it if you’d elaborate, or refer me to documentation that describes the difference between CCleaner’s browser cleaning and that of the browser private mode.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

6

I stick my tongue out at the suggestion (by others not your question) that it’s equivalent. It is not, using CCleaner (at least version6 and mostly 7) allows for picking and choosing what information stays (I want to remain signed into new york times, I don’t like to stay logged in to google. An incognito window thinks all traffic can be hidden/removed (1). Closing the browser and letting it clean everything itself (not ccleaner) also doesn’t allow my wants

CCleaner could (can still kinda) be told what to keep including keep some from a site and not others; NYTimes uses ad cookies and account cookies. I can reset my ad usage without signing me out to the account with CCleaner 6.x and kinda 7. I haven’t tested 7 for separate site/ad cookies but it carried over my separations but it asks for a website to add sites and I haven’t tried. It’s much more clunky than seeing all the cookies on your machine and moving them to the whitelist we had in 6.xx

(1)Why Chrome Incognito mode is not private browsing

7

That’s helpful; thanks for explaining.

I’d forgotten about the feature to selectively delete cookies. I’ve tried to use it on several occasions over the years, but found that I had to keep extra cookies that I didn’t want in order to stay logged in to (or at least avoid MFA prompts for) sites I liked. I was assuming there’d be one cookie per site that had the special token that identified me, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Or I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. Anyway, that’s a site issue, not a CCleaner issue.

I’ll give this another try once v7 adds smart cleaning back. Thanks for the suggestion.

8

This is outrageous! How could CCleaner 7 have deleted such an important feature as Enable Automatic Browser Cleaning?

I have been using CCleaner for years but this might make me change my mind. For shame!