CCleaner comes to mind when anyone talks about cleaning junk files and freeing up hard drive space in a Windows PC. But starting with the newer builds of Windows 10, you may not need CCleaner that much as Windows now comes with a feature called “Storage Sense” that allows you to clean junk files and reclaim storage space automatically. Third party software like CCleaner can also do it automatically, but Microsoft’s storage sense feature is built inside the operating system settings and you can turn storage sense on at the click of a button. When enabled storage sense will automatically clean unnecessary files from your drives and save your time otherwise spent in running various third party cleaning tools.
You can enable Storage Sense in Windows 10 in the following manner:
- Click on Start button and select Settings. You can also use hotkey Win+I.
- Select System and then Storage.
- You will find Storage Sense on the right side. Click on the small flip switch to turn on storage sense in your Windows PC.
- In order to configure storage sense, scroll down and click on Change how we free up space automatically.
- From the various options you can select when storage sense is run (when Windows decides, every day, every week or every month), when to delete files in the Recycle Bin or in the Downloads folder (never, every day, in 14 days, in 30 days, or in 60 days).
Once you enable storage sense in your Windows PC, the settings are enable for all the hard drives and other storage devices. Windows will automatically run storage sense on these storage devices to remove junk files, and free up storage space. This way you will never run out of the storage space when installing new applications, downloading files, getting updates for Windows or other programs and when installing new games through Steam or GOG.