Steam Cleaner: clear temporary Steam, Origin, uPlay and Gog data

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 29, 2016
Software
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16

Steam Cleaner is a program for Windows that clears temporary data of the gaming platforms Steam, Origin, uPlay and Gog.

The program is not to be confused with Tiki Steam Cleaner which we reviewed back in 2013. Unlike Tiki Steam Cleaner, Steam Cleaner is capable of deleting temporary data from other gaming platforms for Windows as well.

Note: Steam Cleaner requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 4 to run.

Some games that you install on a gaming platform like Steam install so-called redistributable packages on the system during installation which may be required for game play.

The installation files are not needed anymore after installation, but game platforms keep them around anyway. These files may take up hundreds of Megabyte of space, or even Gigabytes depending on the games that you have installed in the path on your system.

This may not be a problem if your main gaming hard drive has Terabytes of free space, but if you run games on a Solid State Drive, free space may be limited.

Steam Cleaner

Steam Cleaner is one of those run and forget programs. Simply download the application to your system and run it afterwards.

If things go well, you should see the main program interface and the temporary files that Steam Cleaner detected during its  -- quick -- scan of the system.

The detected gaming platforms are listed at the top. The program ships without any configuration options which means that you cannot modify the paths manually if the automatic detection does not pick up the installed platforms correctly.

Steam Cleaner lists all temporary files in list form in its interface after the scan. Each entry is listed with its path, file name, and size.

The program displays the total size of all temp files as well in its interface, about 750 Megabyte on a test system with just a couple of game installations in the past year.

All that is left to do at this point is to click on the clean button in the interface to remove all temporary files from all gaming platforms that Steam Cleaner detected.

You need to confirm the action one more time when you click on the button. If you do, all files listed are removed from the hard drive.

These files are not needed for playing these installed games.

Closing Words

Steam Cleaner is an easy to use program that may help you free up hundreds of Megabyte of temporary storage that programs like CCleaner don't detect by default.

The program could do with a couple of preferences, for instance to set program paths if platforms are not detected correctly, or options to back up the files to another location for safe keeping.

Now You: do you use Steam or another gaming platform?

Summary
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Author Rating
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4 based on 11 votes
Software Name
Steam Cleaner
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Games
Landing Page
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Comments

  1. insanelyapple said on November 30, 2016 at 1:30 pm
    Reply

    It asks for connection to 151.101.36.133 address but works when I block access in firewall – any ideas what’s behind that ip?

  2. CHEF-KOCH said on November 30, 2016 at 12:33 am
    Reply

    Nah, sorry I not recommended it, CCleaner already does this. You just need to put the official winap2.ini into same place as the ccleaner.exe and then you get Steam, GOD and other cleaning options.

    https://github.com/MoscaDotTo/Winapp2

    CK

  3. Womble said on November 30, 2016 at 12:17 am
    Reply

    Tool worked well for me.

    However the use of .net 4 (4.5GB) for a tool that specialises in conserving space is questionable.

  4. beergas said on November 29, 2016 at 9:00 pm
    Reply

    175 files 105MB fast decent thanks

  5. Maelish said on November 29, 2016 at 1:32 pm
    Reply

    Wow, 2 gig of files I didn’t need were gone in moments. Nice!

    1. Steve said on November 29, 2016 at 7:48 pm
      Reply

      Same here gig’s of file deleted, thought CCleaner (winnapp2) was good, side by side works great.

  6. Matt said on November 29, 2016 at 1:15 pm
    Reply

    Where is the link ? The whole article is about Steam Cleaner but no link?

    1. Ann said on November 29, 2016 at 4:28 pm
      Reply

      look in the summary box
      Landing Page
      https://github.com/Codeusa/SteamCleaner/

  7. Oudah said on November 29, 2016 at 11:17 am
    Reply

    Question ? Why don’t you add url of the software you test ? Each time I got to “google” for it ??

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 29, 2016 at 1:51 pm
      Reply

      The link is always in the summary box below the article.

    2. jimbobillyjoe said on November 29, 2016 at 1:27 pm
      Reply

      @Oudah He does. At the bottom of articles on this site is a box that says Summary and in there contains the link (if applicable) – in this instance it’s https://github.com/Codeusa/SteamCleaner/

      Once in a while Martin forgets to link but it’s rare

  8. zund said on November 29, 2016 at 9:53 am
    Reply

    fyi: in case of repair or an update those “cleaned” files will be downloaded again.
    which makes the cleaner pretty pointless…

    1. Finvana said on November 29, 2016 at 10:07 am
      Reply

      Redistributables as DirectX or runtimes are not downloaded again with updates. I’ve been using Tikione Steam cleaner for a long time and it helps a lot to get rid of this kind of files.

      1. zund said on November 30, 2016 at 11:32 am
        Reply

        not with updates, i’ll give you that.
        but if you repair (the game) they are downloaded again and, if you just downloaded and haven’t started the game, the installation will fail.

        also, a simple “gci -r *20*.cab | ri -force” does the same job…
        or, you could just move/archive the game-subdir to a NAS/ext.HDD if you’ve finished it and won’t play it again.

  9. Etescartz said on November 29, 2016 at 9:37 am
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks! I’ll try this out and see how it compares to the CCleaner + CCEnhancer combo.

  10. Dan said on November 29, 2016 at 8:04 am
    Reply

    This might actually be useful. I use Steam but on GOG I don’t use their app. Thanks for the tip!

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