Developer releases GameCleaner to identify and reclaim SSD space from unused Steam games

I built a free tool to find the Steam games eating your SSD

My 1TB SSD was permanently full. Not because I play that many games — because I'd installed 40 of them, played each once, and never uninstalled. Steam can move a game, but nothing told me which games across my whole library were dead weight. So I built GameCleaner. What it does Scans your Steam library and ranks every game by how long since you last played it. Shows exactly how much space is reclaimable before you touch anything. Frees space three ways: clear shader caches, uninstall stale games, or move them between drives. Backs up your saves first — reclaiming space never risks your progress. The stack Pure-Python engine (stdlib only — scanner / actions / backup, parses Steam's .vdf by hand). Tkinter GUI so it ships with Python and needs zero extra deps, on Windows and Linux. Packaged to a single .exe with PyInstaller for non-technical gamers. Free tier scans + cleans shader caches. That alone reclaimed ~200GB on my drive. Try it: https://gamecleaner.netlify.app It's an early build — I'd genuinely love feedback on the scan heuristics and what other stores (Epic/GOG/Xbox) you'd want covered. What would make you actually trust a tool to uninstall your games?

5 hours ago

I built a tool to reclaim disk space from Steam games you forgot you installed

The problem Every few months my SSD hits 95% full. The culprit is always the same: AAA games I installed, played for a week, and never opened again. Steam's storage view shows size per game — but not how long since I last played. So cleanup was always guesswork. What I built GameCleaner scans your Steam library and: Sorts every game by size on disk Flags titles you haven't touched in months ("stale") Estimates total reclaimable GB Backs up saves (userdata + Proton compatdata) before any removal Lets you uninstall, clear shader caches, or move games between drives — dry-run by default, path-contained deletes How it works under the hood It parses Steam's libraryfolders.vdf and each appmanifest_*.acf, reads SizeOnDisk and LastUpdated, and walks the shader cache. Move actions copy → verify size → then delete the source, so a transfer can't leave you with a half-broken install. Status Early. Steam on Windows/Linux for now; Epic/GOG next. Landing + waitlist while I package the app. Try it / join early access: https://gamecleaner.netlify.app Feedback welcome — especially on per-game save locations I should cover beyond userdata/compatdata.

22 hours ago