CCleaner 6 Is Here: Why the New CCleaner Is Worth It

There was a time when CCleaner was the single best tool you could use to speed up your PC. Windows has become better at doing some of the things that made CCleaner what it was. However, CCleaner cleans dozens of Windows features and over 500 third-party apps.

The release of the new CCleaner 6 begs the question: is CCleaner still worth it?

The short answer: yes it is.

Let’s see what makes CCleaner 6 worth your time.

What Is CCleaner 6?

CCleaner 6 is the latest version of CCleaner, the popular junk cleaning app that promises to free up your storage space and improve privacy. The newer version packs all the features that fans love from the older versions and introduces a few new ones.

For the first time, CCleaner 6 features “Performance Optimizer”, a patented feature that promises significant performance, battery, and efficiency uplifts for both new and old PCs.

What’s New in CCleaner 6?

CCleaner 6 is a substantial release. For starters, it builds upon CCleaner’s already good Software Updater and makes the feature even better by adding support for 50 more programs.

For the uninitiated, CCleaner’s Software Updater helps you to keep the programs on your PC up to date. As new security vulnerabilities come to the surface, developers are fighting an uphill battle to keep customers safe by improving the security of their apps, so ensuring your programs are up to date is critical. And CCleaner 6 aims to make the update process hassle-free.

The company has also promised that the list of supported apps will keep on growing.

The signature feature of CCleaner 6 is the all-new “Performance Optimizer”. With Performance Optimizer, CCleaner 6 delivers up to 30% more battery life and up to 34% better overall performance.

Performance Optimizer “optimizes” both new and old machines. Not only this, the folks behind CCleaner 6 claim that they have designed Performance Optimizer with the future in mind.

Not only will Performance Optimizer work for old and current-gen Windows machines, but it will also work for machines in the future.

Let’s look at these features in more detail.

CCleaner 6’s Performance Optimizer Supercharges Your PC

Performance Optimizer is the signature new feature of CCleaner 6. Unlike other startup managers and task managers, Performance Optimizer doesn’t disable all background processes outright. It uses a patented method of analyzing installed apps and putting them to sleep.

To use Performance Optimizer:

• Download CCleaner 6 and install it.
• Open CCleaner 6 and click on Performance Optimizer in the left-hand panel. Wait for the scan to finish.
• Finally, put all apps into sleep mode or pick and choose apps that you want to disable.

According to the developers, using Performance Optimizer can net you up to 30% more battery life and up to 34% more performance on both new and old PCs.

Before we dive deep into whether Performance Optimizer delivers on its promises, let’s see how it works.

First, Performance Optimizer scans the computer for all installed applications and maintains a list. Afterward, it analyzes these programs and determines the background processes associated with these programs.

Next, Performance Optimizer lists these apps and gives you the option to put them to sleep. Once you put them to sleep, the apps don’t run in the background. Any associated Windows Services are disabled by default, startup behavior is changed, so the apps never start at boot time, and non-critical scheduled tasks are aborted.

Finally, any app that you put to sleep will start working as normal when you decide to use it.

In essence, Performance Optimizer determines non-critical and unused apps and puts them to sleep. It re-enables the apps as soon as you need them.

So, how well does Performance Optimizer work? More importantly, does it produce any measurable performance uplift in real life?

To answer this question, the developers put Performance Optimizer through its paces and tested it on three computers:

• An old PC from 2015 with a quad-core Intel CPU, 500GB HDD, and 8GB RAM.
• A mid-range laptop from 2022 with a 4/6 core Intel CPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, and 16GB of RAM with a 256GB SSD.
• A “future 2024 laptop”. To simulate this, the company used a high-end gaming laptop with an Intel Core i9-1900HK, 32GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, and a GeForce RTX 3080.

All three machines were tested with tools such as Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Kit once in the new state, once after installing 50 – 60 apps, and once after using Performance Optimizer.

Boot Time Improvements

Performance Optimizer reduced boot times quite noticeably for all three machines. The boot time improvement was most pronounced for the old PC with an HDD.

Thanks to an aging processor and slow HDD, the old PC took 150 seconds to boot up after installing apps. Performance Optimizer cut these boot times by 72%, resulting in the PC booting up in 42 seconds.

Although considerably less compared to the old PC, the mid-range and future laptops also noted faster startups by 40% and 43% respectively.

Performance Improvements

The general performance also saw a noticeable uptick after using Performance Optimizer. Once again the performance uplift was the biggest for the old PC.

The old PC returned a synthetic benchmark score of 2660 without optimizations. After Performance Optimizer put unnecessary apps to sleep, the score increased by 34% to 3564.

Both the mid-range and future laptops scored minored performance increases of 2% each.

Battery Life and Power Consumption Improvements

Performance Optimizer delivered significant battery life and efficiency increases for all three machines. For the mid-range laptop from 2021, battery life improved by 5.6% after using Performance Optimizer.

Impressively, the future laptop saw a battery life increase of 30% and ended up lasting an extra hour.

When it comes to power consumption, the old PC drew in between 65W and 70W in a pre-optimization state. After optimizations, the PC only drew 45W.

Similarly, power consumption during startup also decreased from 150W to 70W.

Putting all of this together, CCleaner 6’s Performance Optimizer delivered impressive gains in all areas. Aging hardware benefited the most from these gains.

Improved Software Updater

A normal Windows PC has upwards of 50 programs. From programs that come bundled with Windows like Windows Media Player to the ones that we install ourselves like Zoom, keeping track of which apps to update can get overwhelming.

Making matters worse, some apps don’t update automatically. So, if you forget to update them manually, you may continue to use an outdated version.

While using an outdated app doesn’t sound bad at first, you must keep in mind that many old apps have glaring security holes in them. Bad actors can potentially exploit these security loopholes to hijack your computer and cause excessive damage.

In short, keeping apps up to date is critical but most of us need a streamlined way to do this.

This is where CCleaner 6 comes in.

As we’ve mentioned above, CCleaner 6 has an improved Software Updater with support for 50 more apps compared to the previous version. Software Updater automatically keeps track of available updates and installs all updates with one click.

To use Software Updater:

• Download and install CCleaner 6.
• Open the app and click on Tools located in the left-hand panel. Next, hit Software Updater.
• Wait for CCleaner 6 to scan all installed apps and look for available updates.
• Once the scan has stopped, choose Update All to update all apps in one go.

As you can see, CCleaner 6 makes it super easy to keep your apps updated. So, use it and make your PC more secure and reliable.

Performance Optimizer Makes CCleaner 6 Worth It

Although CCleaner 6 packs all the usual CCleaner features, none of them make as big an impact as Performance Optimizer. Put simply, it works wonders for old PCs.

Add to it the improved Software Updater and CCleaner 6 proves itself to be worth giving a try.