Flatsweep Cleans Leftover Data from Uninstalled Flatpaks

Caches, config, and other cruft is sometimes left behind – and Flatpak, new-fangled and fabulous though it is, is (I’ve learned) no different.

We’re not talking gigabytes of residual data here — before anyone panics! — more a few stray MBs at most. Cleaning this away can keep your file system nice and tidy (though not doing it is extremely unlikely to cause any ill effects – so don’t feel bad if you can’t be bothered).

Making the task easier is Flatsweep, a GTK4/libadwaita tool. This checks for leftover cruft and, if found, cleans it away. A deft frontend makes it dead-simple to use: open, run, clean, done.

That said, those using custom install paths for Flatpak should use Flatsweep with a degree of caution, as the developer notes: “…of you have set a custom install path, it might accidentally delete files that weren’t supposed to be deleted.”

I ran it on a couple of my devices, and despite having installed/uninstalled an array of apps over the past few months Flatsweep found no leftover data on all bar one – which is pretty awesome to know.

Still, if you’re minded to try it out yourself (curiosity is a powerful thing) feel free to do so — but do pop back to let me know if it found any leftover data (and how much) for you!

• Get Flatsweep on Flathub