BleachBit 6.0.2

Submitted by andrew on

BleachBit 6.0.2 Release Notes

BleachBit 6.0.2 is a maintenance release that fixes a security issue on Windows, adds cleaners for Visual Studio Code, Codium, Antigravity, Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, and Claude Code, and improves performance and reliability across Windows and Linux.

Upgrade now

Changes since version 6.0.0

All Platforms

New Features

  • Add cleaning support for Visual Studio Code, Codium, Antigravity, Cursor, Windsurf, and Devin
  • Add support for multiple browser profiles on Chrome and Edge
  • Add cleaner for Claude Code
  • Add DNS cache cleaner
  • Clean AI models from Google Chrome
  • When shredding a filename, reduce data remnants and speed up shredding files
  • Convert Apache OpenOffice (formerly called OpenOffice.org) cleaner from Python to CleanerML
  • Add options to deep scan for developers: venv, __pycache__, node_modules, and .angular
  • Clear clipboard after shredding files from paste operation

User interface and performance

  • Limit the line width of long warning text
  • Improve the logic that triggers the notice during startup about Expert Mode
  • During deep scan, skip directories listed in the keep list to improve the speed of scanning
  • Stop trying to rename files when an error is not retryable
  • Respond to keyboard interrupt (Ctrl+C) when shredding filenames
  • Warn when the configuration file is not writable
  • Disable the chaff controls while generating chaff

Bug Fixes

  • If there are errors reading the cookie keep list, then it will abort the cookie cleaning process to avoid removing important cookies
  • Fix: crash in recognition of local cleaners
  • Fix: GUI stops loading if recognition fails
  • Fix: cleaner loading with invalid data types
  • Fix crash with certain Unicode on the CLI
  • Fix: escape invalid Unicode in system information output
  • Fix: allow Unicode in keep/custom lists
  • Fix: avoid losing custom theme icons in Vivaldi by not deleting files in the VivaldiThumbnails folder
  • Fix DuplicateOptionError when restoring warning preferences
  • Improve handling of symlinks in keep list (whitelist)
  • Improve reliability when running external processes without waiting

Windows

New Features

  • Add %WindowsSystem% variable for c:\windows\system32 and c:\windows\sysnative
  • Use native APIs to clear clipboard on Windows
  • Shrink the installer and installed size. Re-enable UPX file compression and remove unneeded files. These changes reduced the installer by 700KB, the portable zip by 3MB, and the installed size by 22MB (47%)

Bug Fixes

  • Fix potential security issue where a malicious actor could delete arbitrary files when cleaning with elevated privileges (CVE-2026-55567). Issue identified by Zeze with TeamT5.
  • Fix access denied errors when clearing the clipboard on Windows
  • Fix crash with unpaired surrogate characters on CLI
  • Fix anonymization of 8.3 short file names
  • Fix handling of unpaired surrogates in keep/custom lists
  • Improve robustness of splash screen

Other

  • Update NSIS from 3.03 to 3.12 in AppVeyor CI
  • Improve installer experience for unsupported Windows

Linux

New Features

  • Add AppImage binary to run on most x86-64 Linux systems
  • Improve detection of trash on Linux
  • Clean Librewolf installed by official .deb
  • Clean Transmission installed as flatpak
  • Add cleaner for Profanity (chat client)
  • Clean Flatpak localizations

Bug Fixes

  • Handle disk quota exceeded (EDQUOT) when wiping a path
  • Fix: could not run CLI as root under Wayland
  • Improve exception handling with snap
  • Fix: keep .desktop files whose Exec path is quoted
  • Require XDG .desktop files to have 'Name' field
  • Fix AppStream metadata
  • Fix crash on startup when requests was not installed
  • Add python3-requests as dependency in RPM and Debian packaging
  • Read swapfile information as text
  • Fix: drag and drop did not work on Wayland
  • Fix detection of snap running
  • Suppress ImportWarning (seen on older distribution)
  • Handle BrokenPipeError in the CLI (for example, when piping to head)

Other changes

The download pages now show checksums inline at the bottom, rather than requiring the user to download a file. (All prior validation methods are still available.)

For Developers

  • Add install-deps.sh to install user and developer dependencies
  • Code changes to prepare for improved macOS support
  • Run some Windows tests also with reduced privileges
  • List of commits
  • List of closed issues

Website & Documentation

Upgrade now

Blog tags: 
release