FluentCleaner: Two Cleaners, One Release

[Belim]

⚠️ Beware of fake FluentCleaner sites

This GitHub repo is the only official source for FluentCleaner. I don't own, run, or endorse any download page outside of it.

Earlier today I found two sites impersonating this project: fluentcleaner[.]org, and a fake "Download ZIP" page hosted on coolingexpertsksa[.]com. Neither has anything to do with me, they're cloning the project page and serving something else entirely. This matches the wider wave of 290+ fake-repo infostealer sites that's been going around, not a one-off.

A polished website doesn't make it official. If it's not this repo, it's not me, only grab releases from the links below.

FluentCleaner & FluentCleaner Classic - new builds of both

Two updates dropping together today, one for each side of the family

Downloads

	FluentCleaner (WinUI3)	FluentCleaner Classic
Latest version	26.07.03	1.07.041
Version scheme	date-based (YY.MM.DD)	classic (Major.Minor.Build)
Download	FluentCleaner-win-x64.zip	FluentCleaner-Classic-net48.zip

What's new

FluentCleaner (WinUI3)

• First version actually running on the shared FluentCleaner.Core, the same scan/clean engine Classic uses
• Post-clean tasks now time out after 10s instead of waiting forever, a stuck shell command can no longer hang an /AUTO run

FluentCleaner Classic

• Fixed a couple of critical DPI scaling bugs
• Running-browser detection, with a warning before cleaning entries tied to a browser that's still open
• Rule Lab
• Custom and Settings sections are finalized
• "Open in folder" on results in the detail view
• Exclusions
• Cleaner results display in the summary
• Progress bar now tracks live up to 100%
• Reworked nav icons
• Overall look now leans more on the original CCleaner v4 for inspiration

Classic got the bulk of the attention this round, mostly it going from "freshly baked" to something that holds up under daily use. WinUI3's change is smaller but matters more than it looks.

So, which one do you actually want?

Both ship the same scan engine and read the same Winapp2.ini/Winapp3.ini database, so functionally they clean the same junk. Where they differ is philosophy.

Classic is the "what you see is what runs" option. No runtime bundle, no self-contained deployment weighing it down, it just calls into whatever .NET Framework your Windows already has sitting there. That also makes it the easier of the two to maintain on my end: less moving parts, less surface area for something to quietly break between Windows builds, and a WinForms layout that doesn't fight me when I want to ship a fix same-day.

WinUI3 is where the actual future lives. Fluent design, proper theming, localization pipeline, and it's the one that'll keep pulling in whatever Windows exposes next. If you want FluentCleaner to look and feel like a 2026 app, this is it.

I'm nudging both toward the same feature set over time, but I won't pretend they'll ever be pixel-for-pixel identical. Some things are just faster for me to get right in WinForms first; other things are WinUI3-only by nature of the platform. Expect the gap to close, not disappear.

Over to you

Genuinely curious where the community lands on this one. Both are staying either way, I'd just like to know where to put the extra hours. Drop a vote here: #100

Classic's lighter footprint, or WinUI3's modern shell? Both are staying, I'd just like to know where to put the extra hours

Support

Developing FluentCleaner (WinUI3 + Classic) happens in my free time and the app stays completely free. If it's useful to you, a small donation via PayPal or Ko-fi goes a long way toward keeping both versions maintained in parallel.

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This discussion was created from the release FluentCleaner: Two Cleaners, One Release.