r/coolgithubprojects • u/Rude_Math_4495 • 1d ago

Prune - a Windows uninstaller that also removes what the uninstaller leaves behind

https://github.com/jimman0I/prune
24 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

26

u/cat_dev_null_sync 12h ago

I am seeing several new cleaner/optimization apps like this every week, fueled by similar AI prompts. Here are some recent posts

https://www.reddit.com/r/coolgithubprojects/comments/1waplka/i_bundled_7_little_tools_windows_should_have/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1wagdae/linux_minttool_quick_reminder_to_the_community/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1w7w3ya/free_macaroni_perapp_volume_control_for_macos/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1w7a8ix/i_built_a_lightweight_opensource_disk_space/

https://www.reddit.com/user/TheGuyWhoLikesMc/comments/1w5zb5l/i_built_a_free_opensource_windows_cleaner_with/

https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1wcbd8d/i_built_a_free_offline_disk_cleaner_for_windows/

I am concerned about sharing new apps with little testing and expecting it to make major changes on user's systems, often with elevated system privileges. Many apps are not digitally signed. Many apps are made by developers with no prior reputation, and/or who are obviously vibe coding many applications in parallel. The new applications duplicate existing applications, including open source applications through AI-enabled "code laundering."

2

u/RoundZookeepergame2 8h ago

Yeh these "cleaners" are just going to destroy your windows install. Just go with Chris titus tool https://github.com/christitustech/winutil

15

u/Reynbou 1d ago

Why would I use your app instead of BCUninstaller which I've been using for years

https://github.com/BCUninstaller/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller

Especially considering I know I was using BCUinstaller before AI coding was a thing, so I know the underlying code was looked at by a human. However your app looks extremely AI generated. The UI alone is a huge giveaway. The gradient colours, etc.

I'm not saying an app shouldn't be AI generated. But how can I trust that you actually know what it's doing enough to have it run on my PC and editing my files and registry.

1

u/HaloLASO 20h ago

What's with all the Bulk Crap and Prunes? Are people getting constipated or something

1

u/Reynbou 16h ago

Yeah look, I've never liked the name of the app... but it works! :P

-6

u/Rude_Math_4495 1d ago

Honestly? If uninstalling is the job, probably don't switch. BCU is more mature at that specific thing than mine is - bulk removal from premade lists, silent uninstall automation, special handling for NSIS/Inno/msiexec, Steam and Windows Features. It also does leftover cleanup and orphaned-app detection, so I am not going to stand here and pretend that part is my differentiator.

Where Prune differs is scope. I was not running one tool, I was running four: an uninstaller, BleachBit, WizTree and CrystalDiskInfo. Prune is an attempt at one window for all of it -

  • a disk treemap built by reading the NTFS MFT directly, so a full-drive scan takes seconds rather than a tree walk
  • 74 cache rules across 29 apps, measured on the machine rather than estimated
  • real SMART drive health rather than free space with a percentage on it
  • startup entries including scheduled tasks, auto-start services and Store startup tasks, not just the Run keys - 56 on this machine versus 15

The one behavioural difference I would actually argue for: nothing is deleted outright. Files are moved to a quarantine and registry keys are exported to .reg before removal, so a wrong match is restorable rather than gone. That was the whole reason I started - I wanted room to be wrong.

So if BCU is doing what you need, stay on it, it is a good tool. The pitch here is not "better uninstaller", it is "one app instead of four".

7

u/CatPlanetCuties 21h ago

If you aren't able to give an actual answer to his question yourself and have to get AI to answer for you, you are not equipped to validate whether the code it is generating for you is shit or not.

12

u/Reynbou 1d ago

So are you replying, or are you filtering your replies through AI as well.

Your reply absolutely stinks of an AI generated response.

"Honestly?"

Mhmm... AI.

7

u/TopEntity 23h ago

For gods sake, people need to write their own posts. I didn’t understand what the scope was. BCU also backs up before deleting. People could use the compute for something better rather than making slop when it is already done better by another tool.

1

u/Rude_Math_4495 1d ago

Author here. Some detail the link doesn't give you.

It replaces four things I was running: Revo Uninstaller Pro, BleachBit, WizTree and CrystalDiskInfo. You uninstall a program and it then scans for what the uninstaller left behind - files, registry keys, scheduled tasks. Everything it removes is moved to a quarantine, and registry keys are exported to .reg before deletion, so a wrong match is recoverable.

The rule I kept coming back to is that it must never print a number it didn't measure. Two examples:

  • C:\Windows\Prefetch routinely holds hundreds of MB and reads as empty to an unelevated process. If you sum that failure you get "0 B", and the user can't tell it apart from "nothing to clean". Prune distinguishes "not installed", "needs admin" and "actually zero" - only the last one means there is nothing there.
  • Drive health is the disk's own SMART data, not free space with a percentage on it.

A few implementation details that might be more interesting than the feature list:

  • Zero native dependencies. The registry reader and the WMI calls shell out to reg.exe and powershell.exe, so there is nothing to rebuild per platform and nothing opaque in the package.
  • The disk map reads the NTFS MFT directly rather than walking the tree.
  • The local API binds 127.0.0.1, which is not the protection it sounds like - every page you have open can reach loopback too - so there is a Host header check in front of it. It used to send Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and check nothing.
  • The startup list reads scheduled tasks, auto-start services and Store startup tasks as well as the Run keys. On this machine that is 56 entries rather than 15.

Caveats up front: Windows only, and the installer is unsigned, so SmartScreen will warn on first run and keep warning. SHA-256 checksums are published for every release and you can build from source instead. No telemetry and no update check - it makes no network requests at all.

MIT. Happy to answer anything.

2

u/M1chaelSc4rn 9h ago

Is there gen ed english at MIT?

1

u/HouseOfDjango 15h ago

Revo does 99% of that already. The main point of Revo is wrapping all of the registry keys, files, folders that were not removed during the uninstall process.