Industry Computer software Key people Guy Saner (CEO) Founder Guy Saner | Area served Worldwide Website www.piriform.com Headquarters London, United Kingdom | |
Type Private limited company Products CCleaner
Recuva
Defraggler
Speccy
CCleaner Cloud Founded 15 September 2005, London, United Kingdom Profiles | ||
Piriform is a privately owned software company based in London, UK. It develops cleaning and optimisation software for Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems, plus Android devices.
Contents
Piriform tools include CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva and Speccy,. On 22 September 2015, Piriform launched CCleaner Cloud, which uses the CCleaner technology to maintain PCs remotely.
Piriform means "pear-shaped". The OED lists "to go pear-shaped" as British slang for when a situation doesn't go the way you expect.
CCleaner
CCleaner has the option to clean your browsers including Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox as well as your system temporary files such as recycle, clipboard, log files etc. It has a separate operation to clean your registry. (A backup of regedit is recommended.) CCleaner's tools include editing and uninstalling programs, editing your startup apps, edit your browser plugins. It can analyse your hard disks individually to determine which files are taking the most space. It can search for duplicate files to help reduce drive storage space. It allows you to quickly access your system restore points. And it can wipe clean the free space on individual drives to completely remove deleted files.
Critical reception
Piriform's most popular application, CCleaner, has been downloaded over 2 billion times. It is one of the oldest system cleaners, first launched back in 2005. CCleaner is synonymous with system cleaning, just like Google is synonymous with search.
CNET editors gave the application a rating of 5/5 stars, calling it a 'must-have tool'. It was awarded Editor's Choice Award in April 2009 by CNET.
As of January 2014, it has been the most popular software on FileHippo for more than a year, and also has a 5-star editor's rating on Softpedia. CCleaner has been reviewed by Chip.de, TechRadar, PC Magazine, TechRepublic