Add “last used” / “not used for N days” information to installed applications list

[natharuc]

It would be very useful if Bulk Crap Uninstaller could show when an installed application was last used, or at least estimate if an application has not been used for a certain number of days.

For example, the application list could include a column like:

Last used
Days since last use
Not used for 30 / 60 / 90+ days

This would help users decide what can be safely uninstalled, especially when cleaning up old machines with many installed programs.

Why this would be useful

Right now, BCU is very helpful for finding and uninstalling installed software, but deciding what to remove still requires manual judgment.

Knowing that an application has not been used for a long time would make this decision much easier. For example:

Apps not used in 90+ days could be good cleanup candidates.
Large apps not used recently could be prioritized.
Users could avoid uninstalling apps that are still actively used.

Possible implementation ideas

I’m not sure what the best data source would be, but maybe BCU could try to estimate this using Windows data, such as:

Windows Event Logs
Prefetch data
Recently opened files / shell activity
Application execution history, when available
Start Menu / shortcut usage data
Registry information, if Windows stores any reliable usage timestamps

Since this information may not always be available or fully accurate, it could be shown as an estimated value, for example:

Last used: 94 days ago
Source: Windows Prefetch / Event Log
Confidence: Medium

Or BCU could display a warning like:

Usage data is estimated and may not be available for all applications.

Suggested UI

Possible additions:

New optional column: Last used
New optional column: Days since last use
Filter: Show apps not used for more than N days
Sort by last used date
Combine with existing columns like size, install date, publisher, etc.

Example use case

When cleaning up a Windows machine, I may see many applications installed, but I don’t always remember which ones are still used.

If BCU could show that some applications have not been used in 180+ days, I could make a much better decision before uninstalling them.

Additional notes

I understand that Windows may not provide a perfect or official “last used” value for every application, so an estimated / best-effort implementation would already be very helpful.

[Klocman]

This would be easy with the NTFS last accessed timestamp except it's turned on by default on all systems since Vista. Other than that there is no reliable way of detecting this without running all the time monitoring the system activity, and even then there's the issue of sometimes not being able to assign a running application to an entry in BCU.

Currently it would be possible to add a column that indicates if the application is running at this moment. It could show a simple yes/no or a list of process IDs.

Checking prefetch seems to be the most viable way of doing this. It may not be perfect since it is often cleaned and not everything might show up in there, but I can see it working well enough. It'd probably be a good idea to have some people grab WinPrefetchView and verify that sorting by modified time matches their application usage.

If someone wants to implement this, please send a PR.

[zbalkan]

There are other ways too but they're all expensive. For instance, you can listen to event log 4688 or ETW traces for Kernel-Process or something like that, and keep a last updated stamp. That's not easy but the most reliable way. Prefetch is good enough for this purpose though it's not perfect. I'll try next week. It's been some time I have not contributed back to this project I've been utilizing for years, if not a decade.