BleachBit is the open-source system cleaning software that made the headlines in 2016 when journalists discovered that Hillary Clinton’s organizations were using BleachBit to shred their secret files and make them unrecoverable. Ever since then BleachBit is selling a microfiber cloth with Hillary Clinton picture on it and that can be used to clean various things like smartphone, your keyboard or your computer screen.
Whether you order that microfiber cleaning cloth or not, you can use BleachBit to clean your computer and get rid of junk files. Usually, you have to use BleachBit through the graphical use interface, select the options and click on the clean button. But you can reduce the cleaning time by creating a one-click cleaning shortcut using BleachBit. Here is how:
- Download the portable edition of BleachBit from https://www.bleachbit.org/download.
- Extract the files from the downloaded ZIP archive to a convenient location on your hard drive.
- Create a .BAT file on your Windows desktop using Notepad or Notepad++.
- Add the BleachBit cleaner commands lines in this .BAT file. For example, if you want to clean VLC Media Player recent files history, then use command bleachbit_console.exe -c vlc.mru. The format is [full path to bleachbit_console.exe] -c [cleaner].
- You can add as many cleaning command lines as you want. You can find the available cleaners by giving the command bleachbit_console.exe -l. You can also add file overwrite switch -o to securely erase the files, for example, bleachbit_console.exe -c -o vlc.mru.
- Save the .BAT file and it is ready. Now you can double-click on this BAT file to instantly clean your system using the selected cleaners.
The benefit of using BleachBit one-click shortcut is that everything you want to clean is cleaned only in a few seconds without you having to go through the usual route of selecting options and clicking on a number of buttons. You can use the same method on Linux or Mac OS.