Metadata Consulting [dot] ca: How to Delete Google Chrome old Install & Update Files

Friday, March 20, 2015

How to Delete Google Chrome old Install & Update Files

How to Remove Google Chrome old Install and Update Files

installation files dump

It may surprise you to learn that Google Chrome is a pig when it comes to file management.

This post will deal with Install and Update File management. Each time Chrome updates to a new version the old installation files and downloads are never cleaned. And this wastes a fair deal of space over time, I cleaned 156 Mb in over course of last 2 years.

Now, that being said Google tries to manage this but falls short. For fail-over purposes you'll be surprise to find out that Google Chrome keeps a full 2 versions of active browser working at the same same time.

The current Google Chrome and previous versions are located in the Application directory:

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application

chrome.exe and

old_chrome.exe (the previous version, and all binaries in a separate directory)

The good part of the story is Google Chrome will maintain the current version and all files and 1 version back, as seen in the image to the left.You can blow of the last version to save a nominal amount of space.

The Installation Files Dump Load - the history of all old Google apps installs

The problem is that the original downloaded upgrade files and installation files do not get cleaned up.

These files are located in the following directories.

%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Install
%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Download

Note these directories are the common Install and Download UPDATE directories to to all Google Products, included most commonly Picasa, Earth, Sketch-up etc for its upgrade files.

But they are not needed and just take up space, see image to left. You see directories with GUID names, totally meaningless to understand.

Here how to do some spring cleaning of these directories that will clean Google Chrome and other Google installed Products/Apps.

I like to do things the reliable way and speediest so I created this Windows Batch file to delete the files for these 2 directories.

Download GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat and run it.

NOTE - You may have to run this a few time for the directories to be re-created. I had to run this 3 times. Just put %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Google\Update into your Windows Explorer address bar and you see if the two directories are created under this.

Here's the code to review. Download GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat

I also recommend using BleachBit a new tool to delete cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there for Google Chrome, Firefox and IE Browsers.

http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

There is an option to delete old install files however.

Again, the batch file GoogleChromeAppsDeleteAllOldUpgradeFiles.bat, it super quick and efficient.

If you like this article, you like my series on Google Chrome (you can search for it) or here's a list