TempCleaner

Removing unnecessary files from the computer is the first step toward improving its performance. Besides the fact that you can declutter the hard drive, free up space and make room for new file downloads, this also helps with PC optimization.

Unless you want to go through every piece of data on your disk to decide what you wish to keep and delete, you can turn to software utilities that can do this automatically while making sure that Windows files and private documents remain untouched.

TempCleaner is a small-sized and portable application that aims to make the job as simple as possible by focusing on the Windows temporary folder, which contains auxiliary files that were necessary for downloading important items and that were not auto-deleted by the OS afterward.

Although the lightweight program's not wrapped in a setup kit, it requires .NET Framework to work properly. This is a built-in feature of newer Windows version so you just have to make sure that it's turned on. Also, it should be run with administrator permissions to avoid file access errors when attempting to clear the Windows Temp folder.

Once you reach the main window, the only thing you can do is click the large "Clean!" button and wait for the cleanup to be over. This happened instantly in our tests, where the utility managed to quickly remove about 1500 objects of relatively small size. However, some objects were left behind. When the job is over, the white "Clean!" button turns into green "Completed".

Unfortunately, this is where the app's functionality ends. There's no way of knowing if it really worked unless you check the size of the temp folder yourself, which kind defeats the purpose of the tool since you can simply select all files and delete them yourself once you've gone through the trouble of finding and opening the Windows Temp directory. It would've been a simple and practical solution if TempCleaner showed the number and overall size of the deleted files, or at least display a button for instantly opening the temp location.

Compared to other similar software, this app doesn't perform a scan operation at your command to give you the chance to preview the temporary files eligible for deletion in order to decide if there are any documents you wish to keep.

All aspects considered, TempCleaner might be a fast and no-configuration-necessary cleaner for the Windows temp folder but many users interested in more control are likely to feel disappointed.