How to Run Disk Cleanup in Windows 8

Even though Disk Cleanup is not a very often used tool in Windows, it still does come in handy and I have found that it does a good job of getting rid of some stuff that other cleaners can’t. In Windows 8, you can open Disk Cleanup in a number of ways. In this post, I’ll walk you through the different ways to get to Disk Cleanup.

Disk Cleanup via Administrative Tools

The first way to get to Disk Cleanup is to go to the Control Panel and then open Administrative Tools and click on Disk Cleanup. Pretty straight-forward, but kind of a tedious process.

You can read my previous post on how to open the Control Panel in Windows 8 if you’re having trouble doing that.

Disk Cleanup via Search Charm

The easiest way to open Disk Cleanup is to open the Charms bar and then click on Search.  Type in Disk Cleanup and then click on Settings.

Click on Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files. This will bring up Disk Cleanup.

Disk Cleanup via Run Dialog

Another way to do this is to open a run dialog and type in the direct executable for disk cleanup. Go to the Start Screen, right-click and choose All apps at the bottom. Scroll to the right and then click on Run. Type in Cleanmgr.exe.

Pin to Start Screen

If you really use it a lot, you can right-click on Disk Cleanup in Administrative Tools and choose Pin to Start or Pin to Taskbar.

Show Administrative Tools

Lastly, if you use a lot of the tools under Administrative Tools, you can add them all to the Start Screen and All apps list by going to the Start Screen, opening the Charms bar, clicking on Settings and then clicking on Tiles.

Under Show administrative tools, go ahead and switch the bar to Yes.

Now all the Administrative Tools, including Disk Cleanup, will show up on the Start Screen and on the All apps list.

That’s about it! There are many ways to get to settings and apps in Windows 8, so feel free to customize it to the way you like. Enjoy!