One of the best Windows programs, CCleaner, has finally made its way to Google Android. It's still in beta but anyone can download it. Should you?
If you need to optimise your Windows PC to run at its best, CCleaner is the software you need. It will clean up everything in a jiffy. And like Windows, your Android device can get messy and cluttered with usage. Piriform's new CCleaner for Android aims to make cleaning up Androids super-simple.
Installing CCleaner For Android
Right now, since the app is in beta, it's not as simple as just going to the Play Store and downloading it. But it's still easy. You will first need to sign up for the beta.
It's best to do this from a PC because doing it from mobile didn't work on my Samsung Galaxy S3. You will need to head to this link and click "Become A Tester". Note that this may not work for you, depending on your location. If it fails, you may just have to wait patiently until CCleaner becomes available in your country. Then at the bottom of the page, you will see an option to download CCleaner at the Play Store. It's the usual way to install an app now.
CCleaner for Android has three parts: Cleaner, App Manager and System Info.
Cleaner: Analyze & Clean
Cleaner is the simplest part of Android and might help you regain some valuable storage space. In my tests, it was helpful on a phone with limited internal memory. The process is super simple. Hit the big "Analyze" button (the screen graphic tells you the last time you ran it) and CCleaner will scan your system to find things you can clean up or delete.
This includes cache from several apps like your browser or your gallery—I was pretty surprised to see that my Gallery app was taking up 420MB of cache. You can arrange the apps alphabetically or by cache size. Removing cached data is a big part of cleaning your Android smartphone, and this is an easy interface to do that.
You can also clear items in your browser history (Chrome has to be cleared manually though), your clipboard, and even your call logs and text messages. CCleaner has smart options to set a date in call logs and SMSes so that everything prior to that is deleted, or you can simply choose all or nothing.
Once you've made all your choices, hit the "Clean" button and poof, CCleaner will do the rest! For my usage, on a phone which I had used for 15 days, CCleaner found a total of 420MB worth of stuff to clean. Not bad at all, especially if you're on a handset with 4GB or 8GB of memory!
App Manager
Over the years, you have probably installed a whole lot of apps on your Android phone or tablet. In fact, it probably came preloaded with a bunch of them too. App Master is a good way to bulk uninstall apps, but you won't need that if you have CCleaner on your device.
Head to the App Manager section and you can sort apps by size or alphabetically, with their name, icon and total size. Tap on any app and you'll get more information, like package size, data size, cache size, external media size, etc. Choose which ones you want to uninstall and then hit the big "Uninstall" button at the bottom. CCleaner prompts you to hit "OK" to remove each app, but it's still a lot easier than manually uninstalling each one.
System Info
Want a quick dashboard of where your Android device's resources are being used? CCleaner's System Info tab is the place to go to. It will show you CPU usage (system, user, idle), RAM (used, free), Internal storage (used, free), SD card (used, free) and Battery (level, temperature)—all of these with attractive bar graphs (okay, there's one pie, too).
Information like this can be quite handy, since you can use it to manage RAM on your Android phone or know if your battery needs to be cooled down, since a cooler battery is better at retaining its juice.
Should You Get CCleaner For Android?
As it stands, is CCleaner For Android an app that you need to have installed? Well, it depends on the kind of user you are. If you aren't comfortable tinkering around with software on your phone, CCleaner makes it much simpler to get things done by smartly telling you what you can delete.
If you're a power user, CCleaner is not a robust optimization software like its desktop counterpart. Remember, this is just a beta and things can change in the final version. As developer Piriform has already noted, upcoming features include process management, RAM cleaning, custom folder cleaning and some special options for rooted Androids!
Here's a bigger question though. While it's known that Windows slows down with time, has that been your experience with Android, and does it warrant a cleaning from an app like CCleaner?
