• A new beta of BleachBit, the free, cross-platform system cleaner app is available for testing. • BleachBit 5.1.0 brings selective cookie deletion, support for cleaning more apps and implements ‘broader safety improvements and stronger guardrails’, per the official release announcement. • The latter change, implemented via a new expert mode toggle in the in-app Preferences, is especially welcome given that BleachBit is powerful software and can, if used without care, result in system issues or accidental deletion of critical files. • When expert mode is disabled, any cleaning or modification options still show warnings in the UI as before, but can only be previewed, not cleaned. • It also blocks the ability to use ‘dangerous’ features like adding custom paths to the deletion list. • Elsewhere, the new cookie manager lets you choose which specific cookies to keep before cleaning Chromium and Firefox-based web browsers - handy if you’d rather not be logged out of everything each time you run the app.
Article Summaries:
- BleachBit 5.1.0 beta, now available for Windows and Linux, introduces a new cookie manager and an expert‑mode toggle to improve safety. The cookie manager lets users select which HTTP/HTTPS cookies to keep before cleaning Chromium‑based browsers, while expert mode disables dangerous features such as custom deletion paths and limits actions to preview only unless enabled. Additional changes include broader app support (Zen, Chromium Flatpak, LibreOffice recent‑doc list), expanded cache types for Chromium, renaming “overwrite free space” to “wipe empty space,” and a fix for a hard‑link shredding bug. The release also adds fstrim support, pacman cache fixes, and new signed packages for Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43.
Sources:
- https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/02/bleachbit-beta-cookie-manager-expert-mode (Latest source article published: 2026-02-19 23:21 UTC)