We are pleased to announce BleachBit 3.0. The latest release brings major improvements to the user interface, speed, cleaning thoroughness, and application reliability.

UPDATE February 5, 2020: BleachBit 3.2.0 has been released.

Changes

These are the changes since version 2.2:

Add ability to make chaff, an anti-forensics system. It generates novel documents inspired by 2600 Magazine or messages inspired by Hillary Clinton's publicly-released emails.

Add the command line option --wipe-free-space to wipe the free space in a path.

to wipe the free space in a path. Add a new option to enable debug logging. Find it in the Preferences dialog or as the new command line option --debug .

. Improve scanning speed. This could be most noticable in preview, deep scan, when deleting many small files, and during startup. In some cases, the improvement is greater than 10x. (Thanks to Paweł Polewicz.)

Avoid crash on startup when configuration is corrupt. (Reported by notdexterslab.)

Improve actual speed of application startup.

Improve cleaners: aMule, FileZilla, Midnight Commander, VLC, and Vuze. (Thanks to Tobias-B-Besemer.)

Overhaul cleaner for Thunderbird. (Bug reported by pitsi.)

Fix the error NameError: global name '_' is not defined .

. Graphical user interface Upgrade the graphical toolkit from GTK+ 2 to GTK 3. (Special thanks to Maël Lavault, Tristan Stenner, and Max Khon.) Add dark mode. Add a new stop button to the toolbar. (Suggested by shellaaaron.) Remember the window size and position and whether it was full screen. (Suggested by BBUser.) Make startup seem faster by showing the GUI while loading cleaners in background. (It's also actually faster.) Make the error prettier when update check fails. (Suggested by Tobias-B-Besemer.) Fix various file-encoding errors. (Thanks to Radoslav Stoyanov and others. Reported by jonfre, Tobias-B-Besemer, Mike, ediowar, and others.) Reorder the delete/cancel buttons to a more logical order. (Suggested by hydrogenpi) .

Specific to Linux Add packages for Debian 10 and Ubuntu 19.04. Improve detection that Google Chrome is running. Delete VIM swap files. (Thanks to petrohs.) Fix wiping FAT32 with more than 4GB free space. (Fixed by jamazi) Whitelist the mount point for Flatpak. (Reported by Ub3rZ4cH.) Whitelist the working directory for the Bluetooth daemon. (Reported by iromeister.)

Specific to Windows Clean the shellbags of Windows Explorer. Please note: this will reset the position of desktop icons . If you do not want this, uncheck Shellbags under Windows Explorer. (Thanks to Tobias-B-Besemer.) Improve cleaners: Internet Explorer, Silverlight, TeamViewer, VLC, Windows Media Player, Windows Defender, WinRAR. (Thanks to Tobias-B-Besemer.) Fix shredding a file marked read-only. ( Reported by Tobias-B-Besemer. ) Update shipped dependencies: Python (2.7.15), gettext (0.20.1), SQLite (3.28), and GTK (3.24). Drop support for Windows XP.

More Do you use GPG? I have a new key for signing releases. You can now donate using GitHub sponsors. In the first year, they match your donation and don't charge processing fees! (There are still other ways to donate including PayPal, credit card, and Bitcoin.) Did you know, the first BleachBit release was December 2008, almost 11 years ago?

Developers Packagers: please note multiple changes in dependencies and installed files. Add search="walk.top" to delete the top directory and all its contents. It is equivalent to search="walk.all" to delete the contents (files and directories) followed by search="file" to delete the empty top directory. Add the multi-value variable $$ProgramFiles$$ , which expands to %ProgramFiles% and %ProgramW6432$% .



What's next after BleachBit 3.0? The top priority is to update Python 2.7 to Python 3. Once complete, Python 2.7 will no longer be supported, and the transition will also drop support for Windows Vista.

Known issues

There is a fix for the popup error "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into the driver [...]" seen on Windows. See issue 651.

On Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, and openSUSE, the symptom is either BleachBit does not start or you get the error ImportError: No module named gi in the console. The solution is to install the package python2-gobject or install BleachBit 3.1 beta.

On Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18, there may be an error about unsatisfied dependency python-scandir . To fix this, upgrade to BleachBit 3.1 beta. Newer versions of Ubuntu are not affected.

If on Microsoft Windows you lose positions of your desktop icons (or, if you do not want to lose the positions), uncheck the option Shellbags under Windows Explorer.

If on Microsoft Windows, the BleachBit application window disappears, upgrade to BleachBit 3.1 beta, downgrade to BleachBit 2.2, or see issue 663.

The clipboard cannot be cleaned. Solution: upgrade to BleachBit 3.1 beta.

Translations

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Update Catalan translation thanks to Jaime Muñoz Martín, Marc Coll Carrillo, VPablo

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Update Czech translation thanks to Pavel Borecki

Update Danish translation thanks to Daniel Ejsing-Duun

Update Dutch translation thanks to Robin Tielemans

Update English (Australia) translation thanks to Jared Norris

Update English (United Kingdom) translation thanks to Andi Chandler, Stephan Woidowski

Update Finnish translation thanks to Jiri Grönroos, emp

Update French translation thanks to AO, Anne017, Edouard Marquez, Jean-Marc, Julien Valroff, Nicolas Delvaux, Pierre Slamich, gisele perreault, j0nnnnn0, lann, marius DAVID, Éfrit

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Update Spanish translation thanks to Adolfo Jayme, Adrián García, Alejandro Del Rincón, Alfredo Hernández, Andres Bracho, Jaime Muñoz Martín, Marc Coll Carrillo, Monkey, Toni Estevez, VPablo, William Beltrán, juancarlospaco

Update Swedish translation thanks to Jens Stääf, Jonatan Nyberg, Kristoffer Grundström, sweidre

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