However, it has faced a backlash from users who said that after they turned off Active Monitoring, it was automatically switched back on when they restarted their computer. The security company, which bought CCleaner’s developers Piriform last year, says any data it collects is “anonymised”. Avast removes CCleaner update after privacy backlashĪvast has pulled the most recent update of CCleaner (5.45) after users complained they couldn’t stop the software monitoring how they used it.

This was created by CCleaner users who wanted to remove more types of junk, such as Skype Temporary Files. The best way to improve CCleaner for free is to install CCEnhancer. It didn’t help me much, but could save time depending on your setup. One other feature that Piriform doesn’t list is the expanded Users menu.ĬCleaner Professional lets you run a single system scan on multiple user accounts. It’s home to plenty of knowledgeable CCleaner users and the advice is free. That said, I’ve managed all this time by visiting Piriform’s Community Forum ( ) for advice. It moves you ahead of people using the free version when you need help from CCleaner’s support team. This allows me to start a scan when I’m finished with my PC in the evening, knowing it ’ll shut down automatically when the scan has finished.Īs for Automatic Updates, CCleaner practically begs you to keep it updated by placing a ‘Check for updates’ button at the bottom-right of every menu screen, so you’re only ever a click away from the latest version.Īt last, a reason to be cheerful The final added extra, Premium Support, is more useful. These are slightly more useful than Real-time Monitoring, but they’re hardly worth paying for.īesides, I can already run a scan when it ’s convenient in the free version simply by ticking ‘Shutdown after cleaning’ – click Options, then Advanced to find it (see screenshot above). Scheduled Cleaning and Automatic Updates do just what you’d expect: the former lets you schedule scans for a convenient time, while the latter allows CCleaner to update itself automatically as new versions are released. In the end I switched the feature off altogether by clicking Options, then Monitoring, and removing the ticks next to ‘Enable system monitoring’, ‘Enable browser monitoring’ and Enable Active Monitoring (see screenshot left).

Untick the three boxes within Monitoring to stop CCleaner running in the background

Review of ccleaner professional