-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
FAQ
On Windows, as Administrator on an NTFS drive, ClutterCutter reads the Master File Table directly, which is far faster than walking the filesystem — see Scanning & performance. Without elevation it falls back to a slower walker that still works. You can decline elevation. The Linux build doesn't use this path — it always scans with the portable walker, unprivileged.
In MFT mode, hard-linked files (heavily used by WinSxS) are counted once by their canonical name; tree-walking tools count each path separately. ClutterCutter's total reflects what's actually on disk.
The binaries are currently unsigned, and the app requests admin + reads the raw NTFS volume — behaviour heuristic scanners flag. Choose More info → Run anyway. The source is public and builds are reproduced by GitHub Actions; signing is planned. See Security & privacy.
Nothing until you say so. That view lists known temp/cache locations; you pick what to recycle (multi-select, or Recycle all). Everything goes to the Recycle Bin, so it's recoverable.
No, not directly — and by default you won't even see them in the file lists. Those are Volume Shadow Copies (System Restore points / "previous versions"). Along with the page/hibernation/swap files, WinSxS and NTFS metadata, they're protected system data that's hidden from the Top/Oldest lists. To reclaim that space safely, use the System cleanup view, which sends you to the right built-in Windows tool (System Protection, Disk Cleanup, Virtual Memory settings…). See Usage → System cleanup. You can un-hide these files with Show protected system files in Settings.
No. Recycling updates the view in place on a background thread — the sizes along the path adjust with no freeze and no rescan.
On Windows, ClutterCutter.exe — a single self-contained portable executable with no runtime dependency. Grab it from the releases page, or install it with winget. Deploying across a fleet? Use the ClutterCutter.msi installer instead (silent-install for GPO / SCCM / Intune) — see Installation → Enterprise / network deployment. On Linux (x86_64), ClutterCutter-linux-x86_64.tar.gz — extract it and run ./cluttercutter-gui. On macOS there's no prebuilt binary; build from source. All are the same app sharing one Rust scan engine. (winget installs the Windows portable build only, not the MSI.) See Installation.
winget install StruisICT.ClutterCutter
winget upgrade StruisICT.ClutterCutterSee Installation.
Everything lives under %APPDATA%\ClutterCutter\: your preferences (theme, size units, default panel, which columns to show, and the other File → Settings options) in settings.cfg, the window size in window.cfg, and the table's sort column/direction in sort.cfg.
Help → About → Check for updates asks GitHub for the latest release and tells you if a newer one is out, pointing you at winget upgrade StruisICT.ClutterCutter or the releases page. It's opt-in and never downloads or runs anything on its own.