sifty

sift the junk from the keep

An open source cleanup tool for Windows that lives in your terminal. It finds junk files, duplicates, leftover apps and dev clutter, previews everything before touching it, and only ever deletes to the Recycle Bin, so a clean can always be undone.

pipx install sifty

Download sifty.exe Star on GitHub

Works on Windows 10 and 11 with Python 3.11+, or grab the standalone exe. MIT licensed.

sifty @ PowerShell

PS C:\> sifty junk scan

                                    Junk scan
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Category                           ┃ Key                  ┃  Files ┃     Size ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ User temp files                    │ user-temp            │ 12,136 │ 537.0 MB │
│ Windows temp files (admin)         │ windows-temp         │      0 │      0 B │
│ Thumbnail & icon cache             │ thumbnail-cache      │     30 │  13.1 MB │
│ Browser caches                     │ browser-cache        │ 15,366 │   1.2 GB │
│ Windows Update cache (admin)       │ windows-update-cache │      0 │      0 B │
│ WinGet download cache              │ winget-cache         │     72 │ 189.2 KB │
│ Archived event logs (admin)        │ event-log-archives   │      0 │      0 B │
│ Defender detection history (admin) │ defender-history     │      0 │      0 B │
│ OneDrive sync logs                 │ onedrive-logs        │    199 │  83.1 MB │
│ App crash dumps                    │ crash-dumps          │      0 │      0 B │
│ System crash reports (admin)       │ system-crash-reports │      0 │      0 B │
├────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┼────────┼──────────┤
│ Total reclaimable                  │                      │        │   1.8 GB │
└────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────┴────────┴──────────┘

Run sifty junk clean to preview removal (dry-run by default).

           Junk scan
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Category          ┃     Size ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ User temp files   │ 537.0 MB │
│ Thumbnail cache   │  13.1 MB │
│ Browser caches    │   1.2 GB │
│ WinGet cache      │ 189.2 KB │
│ OneDrive logs     │  83.1 MB │
├───────────────────┼──────────┤
│ Total reclaimable │   1.8 GB │
└───────────────────┴──────────┘

Run sifty junk clean to preview removal.

PS C:\> sifty junk clean --apply

Found 27,803 items totalling 1.8 GB.
Move 27,803 items (1.8 GB) to the Recycle Bin? [y/N]: y
✓ Sent 27,803 items (1.8 GB) to the Recycle Bin.
! 41 item(s) skipped (in use or protected).

PS C:\> sifty undo

Restore 27762 item(s) from the junk clean at 2026-06-12 14:21:45? [y/N]: y
✓ Restored 27762 item(s).

what it sifts

$ sifty checkup

One read-only scan across everything, without touching a single file.

$ sifty junk

Clears temp files, browser caches, crash dumps and more than ten other categories.

$ sifty disk

Shows how full each volume is, lists your biggest files and runs an NTFS-aware duplicate scan.

$ sifty apps

Uninstalls through winget, then sweeps up whatever the uninstaller forgot.

$ sifty purge

Reclaims space from node_modules, __pycache__, orphaned worktrees and WSL2 disks.

$ sifty startup

Trims boot bloat and safe-to-disable services, and everything can be turned back on.

see it run

Real output, straight from the terminal.

sifty @ PowerShell

PS C:\> sifty disk volumes

                         Volumes
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Drive ┃ FS   ┃     Used ┃    Free ┃    Total ┃ Used % ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ C:\   │ NTFS │ 177.4 GB │ 44.7 GB │ 222.0 GB │    80% │
│ E:\   │ NTFS │ 847.6 GB │ 83.9 GB │ 931.5 GB │    91% │
└───────┴──────┴──────────┴─────────┴──────────┴────────┘

                Volumes
┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Drive ┃    Free ┃    Total ┃ Used % ┃
┡━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ C:\   │ 44.7 GB │ 222.0 GB │    80% │
│ E:\   │ 83.9 GB │ 931.5 GB │    91% │
└───────┴─────────┴──────────┴────────┘

PS C:\> sifty disk duplicates D:\Photos

Found 316 duplicate groups.

Reclaimable by de-duplicating: 6.4 GB

PS C:\> sifty junk clean --apply

Found 27,803 items totalling 1.8 GB.
Move 27,803 items (1.8 GB) to the Recycle Bin? [y/N]: y
✓ Sent 27,803 items (1.8 GB) to the Recycle Bin.

PS C:\> Get-Content $env:APPDATA\sifty\audit.log -Tail 2

2026-06-12T13:21:45+00:00 TRASH C:\Users\amine\AppData\Local\Temp\wct8A3.tmp
2026-06-12T13:21:45+00:00 TRASH C:\Users\amine\AppData\Local\...\thumbcache_96.db

PS C:\> sifty undo

Restore 27762 item(s) from the junk clean at 2026-06-12 14:21:45? [y/N]: y
✓ Restored 27762 item(s).

Protected paths like C:\Windows are refused outright. There is no --force flag.

PS C:\> sifty junk scan | jq '[.[].size_bytes] | add'

1940603039

PS C:\> sifty disk volumes | jq '.[] | {drive, percent}'

{
  "drive": "C:\\",
  "percent": 79.9
}
{
  "drive": "E:\\",
  "percent": 91
}

Read-only commands emit JSON when piped, or with --json.

hard to misuse, on purpose

Most cleaners ask for your trust. Sifty is built so it doesn't need much.

Dry-run by default

Nothing changes without an explicit --apply, then a confirm.

Recycle Bin, always

Permanent delete is not a code path, and sifty undo brings things back.

Protected paths

Windows, Program Files and your profile root are refused outright. No override exists.

Audit log

Every applied deletion is logged with a timestamp, so you always have receipts.

The only place Sifty can delete anything

Every removal funnels through this one function, and CI fails if a stray os.remove sneaks in anywhere else. Don't take our word for it, it's nine lines.

Read safety.py on GitHub

def trash(path, allow_subtrees=(), extra_protected=(), *, dry_run=True):
    """Send path to the Recycle Bin after a safety check."""
    assert_safe(path, allow_subtrees, extra_protected)
    if dry_run:
        return True
    send_to_trash(path)   # Recycle Bin, never permanent
    audit(f"TRASH {path}")
    return True

prefer buttons? sifty tui

The same engine, full screen.

sifty tui

Seven screens: Home, Clean, Disk, Apps, Monitor, Reports, AI
Ctrl+P palette, F2 to elevate, Space to bulk-select
Checkup findings come with one-button fixes
The Reports screen tracks reclaimed space and includes undo

ai that can look, not touch

Entirely optional, and deliberately limited in what it can see and do.

Runs on your machine

Talks to Ollama over local HTTP, so nothing ever leaves your computer.

Sees metadata only

It gets names, sizes and paths, never the contents of your files.

Can't delete anything

It can suggest a cleanup, but you decide whether to run or skip it.

get sifty

pipx recommended

pipx install sifty

Isolated, and easy to update later with sifty selfupdate.

Standalone exe

Download sifty.exe

A single file from the latest release, no Python needed.

Scoop

scoop bucket add sifty https://github.com/Vortrix5/scoop-bucket

scoop install sifty

The copy button grabs both lines.

winget

winget install Vortrix5.Sifty

On first run, try sifty doctor and then sifty checkup. Both are read-only.