I'm helping my younger sister with her Windows 11 laptop, which is nearly out of storage. She previously installed Valorant and the Riot Games launcher, but both were removed through Control Panel. I also deleted some leftover folders and uninstalled several other applications, yet the reported storage usage barely changed and Windows still shows roughly 338 GB under Apps. Disk Cleanup and CCleaner recovered very little, and the Storage settings page hasn't made it clear what is consuming the space. What's the best way to find and safely remove the files using all that storage?
3 Answers
WinDirStat or TreeSize Free can also show a visual breakdown of the drive. Let the scan finish, expand the largest folders, and follow the biggest entries until you find the actual files responsible. Windows’ Apps category can sometimes include leftover game data, launchers, caches, and files stored in user profiles, so the listed category may not match what you expect.
Check each user’s AppData folder, especially Local and Roaming, because game launchers and messaging apps can leave behind large caches or downloaded media. You can also inspect the temporary-files section in Windows Storage settings and clear the contents of the user’s temporary folder. Be careful with AppData: only remove clearly identified caches or leftovers, not entire folders blindly.
Messaging media and cached downloads are common causes of unexpectedly large AppData folders.
Use a disk-space analyzer such as WizTree. It scans the drive and sorts folders and files by size, so you can quickly see whether the space is actually in installed games, user folders, AppData, downloads, or something else. Don’t delete anything until you know what it is, and back up important files first. For valuable data, keeping multiple backups on different types of storage is a good idea.
WizTree is a great choice because it scans much faster than many similar tools.
TreeSize Free is a good alternative if WinDirStat feels too slow.