Hey, was having some issues earlier with my Framework Laptop which were Windows 11 related - essentially the user profile had become too large (> 100 GB). Looks like there are a lot of applications like Anaconda 3 and LM Studio which save their environments and models respectively to the user profile directory, which can slow down things a lot.
So I created this python-based tool to reduce the size of the user profile, essentially it moves the files out of your user profile directory and creates a symbolic link (e.g., symlink). Using the tool I got the user profile down to < 10 GB. Not surprisingly, I noticed a significant speedup after dramatically reducing the user profile size. I thought I’d share the tool with you to get your thoughts. Please find the link to the git repo below:
Obviously this tool can be used on any Windows 11 machines, not just Framework machines. Enjoy, and hope the tool is useful!
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Would it have to be run after each windows update?
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I noticed that there are lots of shady programs that their installers don’t even have the option to select install location, forcing the program to C:\users\yourname\appdata\local. Not even in Program Files or Program Files(x86), what the heck?
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So the program uses symlinks, which shouldn’t be changed after Windows Update. It’s like a shortcut, but it allows us to still use the original program path in the user profile but without taking up user profile space.
In case something does happen, you have the symlinks available in the user profile directory, in symlinks.txt.
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Absolutely, there are a good number of games as well that save to the user profile by default, before you know it several gigabytes are added. Even programs like TradeStation are adding their caches and other stuff to the user profile. Many software development tools are adding their caches to the user profile as well.
At least according to Windows 11’s built-in user profile (Advanced System Settings > Advanced > User Profiles > Settings), the AppData folder does not count towards the total user profile size. Am curious to know if the folders within AppData can impact system performance as well. We could potentially look into adding symlinks for the sub-folders in the AppData subfolder as well if that’s the case.
These applications are not necessarily shady, they are just designed to be installed per-user (and therefore do not need the user to be a local administrator.) If they are shady, it is not their installation behavior that makes them shady. If you are using otherwise shady applications that do this, it is not because of how or where they install.