Installation

Installation

Pre-built binaries are attached to every GitHub Release.

Windows

The easiest way is winget:

winget install StruisICT.ClutterCutter
winget upgrade StruisICT.ClutterCutter   # later, to update

winget uses the portable install type: it copies ClutterCutter.exe (under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages\...) and registers a cluttercutter alias on PATH, so you can also launch it from a terminal. It's not an MSI — nothing is installed into Program Files and there's no uninstaller entry beyond winget's own.

Or download from the releases page and just run it — the release attaches a single portable ClutterCutter.exe: one self-contained executable with no runtime dependency. It's not an installer; run it directly from wherever you saved it.

On first run, ClutterCutter offers a one-click UAC relaunch so it can use the NTFS MFT fast path — see Scanning & performance.

SmartScreen / Defender: the binaries are currently unsigned, and ClutterCutter requests administrator rights and reads the raw NTFS volume — behaviour heuristic scanners may warn on. Choose More info → Run anyway. Authenticode signing (SignPath Foundation OSS program) is planned to remove this friction.

System requirements

• Windows 10 / 11 (x64).
• Administrator is optional but recommended for the fast MFT scan path on NTFS drives.