Cross Cleaner

Also known as: Cross-Cleaner, WinBooster/Cross-Cleaner

GPL-3.0 Rust system cleaner positioned as a CCleaner/BleachBit alternative. Database-driven ('addon-style'): published per-OS catalogs name every cleaned program (284 programs / 599 paths on Windows covering browsers, launchers, IDEs, games, antivirus, VPNs, and AI apps incl. Copilot, LM Studio, OpenCode; plus registry entries). Three front-ends on one engine: egui desktop GUI, ratatui TUI, and clap CLI. Claims Windows, macOS, Linux and Android support incl. arm64. Self-updating binaries, custom JSON database support, Discord community.

Platforms

Interface

Tech stack

Rust

Rust, egui + ratatui + clap front-ends, rayon parallelism (repo language: Rust)

Features

Dev-junk cleaning

One of its features

Development

Solo developer · original author still leads

Nekiplay

Single human contributor on GitHub (Nekiplay, renamed from WinBooster; the rest are github-actions/dependabot bots). The same author posts as u/nekiplay and ran the product subreddit.

License

GPL

Open Source per CSV; GPL-3.0 in repo

Price

Free

'The project is free and open-source. No telemetry, no ads, just a cleanup tool.'

Launched

Nov 28, 2024

repo_created_at

Repo created

Nov 28, 2024

First release

Nov 2024

Last seen alive

Oct 30, 2026

Checks

Mechanical checks derived from the fields above. Each row is one fact; "not yet checked" means exactly that, not a failure. There is no composite score; read them together.

Track record	about 1 year
Source published	Yes
Release signing	Unsigned
Security contact	None found
Reproducible builds	Not yet checked
Telemetry	None
Runs elevated	Not yet checked
Auto-update channel	Unsigned
Recent activity	Last seen yesterday

GPL-3.0 source published on GitHub
v2.0.4.6 Windows installer and CLI exe carry no Authenticode signature (osslsigncode, checked 2026-10-31); macOS and Linux builds ship as bare binaries
Self-updater downloads the release asset over HTTPS and replaces the running binary; the only integrity check is the asset size reported by the GitHub API (crates/selfupdate, database::version::download_asset). A 'no-updater' variant of every binary is published
No SECURITY.md or dedicated security contact; public GitHub issue tracker only
No telemetry or analytics dependencies in the source tree; the sole HTTP client (ureq) serves the GitHub update check and the user-script fetch API. Author claim: 'No telemetry, no ads'

Research notes

Reads like a mid-2026 wave entry but predates it: repo created 2024-11-28, first reddit promotion 2026-09-18.
Repo moved from the author's personal account (github.com/WinBooster, since renamed Nekiplay) to a dedicated 'Cross-Cleaner' GitHub org; the launch posts still link the old URL which now redirects.
Author-run product subreddit r/Cross_Cleaner (created 2026-10-09, banned by 2026-10-31) carried version announcements like 'Cross Cleaner 2.0.4.4' - five-part version numbers (2.0.4.2.2) and 90 releases in 23 months suggest rapid unplanned releases.
Honest-comparison marketing on the site: 'take this as a real option and not an upgrade' re BleachBit - self-aware tone unusual in the catalog.

Announcements

2 recorded (1 since removed)

Sep 18, 2026 r/opensource — Cross Cleaner by u/nekiplay (archived copy)removed

Earliest author promotion found; removed by r/opensource moderators - the archive preserves only the title, the body was never captured

Oct 6, 2026 r/software — Cross-Cleaner: A fast, cross-platform system cleanup tool built with Rust (Open Source) by u/nekiplay

Canonical entry from the project CSV. Kept because the Sep 18 post's body is unrecoverable; this carries the author's problem statement and motivation

I wanted a cleaner that works consistently across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android without the bloat or intrusive behavior often found in similar tools. — Problem statement

Since it's written in Rust, it leverages rayon for multi-threaded performance while carefully preserving critical system files. — Tech bingo

This is an open-source project, and I'm actively looking for feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions. — Virtue

If you try it out, let me know what you think in the comments or open an issue on GitHub. — Engagement hook

The project is free and open-source. No telemetry, no ads, just a cleanup tool. — Trust signal

Sources

URL	Role	Status	Checked
cross-cleaner.github.io/	homepage	200	2026-10-18
github.com/Cross-Cleaner/Cross-Cleaner	repo	200	2026-10-31
www.reddit.com/r/Cross_Cleaner/	other	—	2026-10-31

Wrong, stale, or missing something? Flag this listing: corrections reach the site operator, not Cross Cleaner's developer.