Clean up

What it does

Clean up lists everything Underbrush can clear, grouped by pile: Safe to clear, Your call and Cloud. Each item shows its size, when it last changed, what it is, and for temp and cache folders, what's inside.

Safe to clear items are ticked for you. Your call and Cloud items are not.

Sizes are what a clear would free today. Files changed in the last 3 days are kept, so a folder can be bigger than the size shown; an orange line says how much is being kept. Folders with nothing old enough yet sit in Kept for now at the bottom.

Build output and node_modules folders from the same project are grouped into one line (for example "LookoutNVRRepo · 214 build folders"). Tick the line to take all of them, or open it to pick folders one by one. All and None at the top of each pile tick or untick the whole pile.

How to use it

1. Scan a drive, then open Clean up.
2. Tick or untick items. The bottom shows how much is selected and what free space will be afterwards. Underbrush remembers your choices, even after a rescan.
3. Press Review and clear. You see exactly what will go. Nothing is touched yet.
4. Press Clear to go ahead, or Back to change your mind.
5. The Done screen says how much was freed, how free space changed, what was kept and why, item by item. Back to the list returns to Clean up. History keeps the details.

Cloud items are made online-only, not deleted.

Undo: Your call items are set aside for a week

Safe-to-clear items rebuild on their own, so they're deleted straight away. Your call items (downloads, emulators, old builds, AI models…) are things you chose, so Underbrush sets them aside for a week instead of deleting them. Until then you can put them back from History.

The space they take comes back when the week is up, or straight away if you press Delete now in History. To delete Your call items straight away every time, turn off Set Your call items aside for a week in Settings.

Files are set aside on the same drive they came from, so it's instant and needs no extra space.

Package and build folders (NuGet packages, node_modules, bin and obj, Gradle) are cleared a whole folder at a time: if anything in one is recent or in use, that whole folder is kept, so a tool never finds a half-deleted package.

Troubleshooting

• Freed less than the list said: recent and in-use files are kept, and package caches wait during builds. See Space not freed.
• "Paused because npm is running" (or another build tool): finish or close the build, then clear again.
• A cloud item was skipped: the cloud app didn't accept the change. Use Free up space on the folder in File Explorer. On a Mac, select the files in Finder and choose Remove Download; this isn't automatic on Mac yet.

Related

• The piles and the safety rules
• History
• Dashboard