Three apps in this category shipped something genuinely new in 2026. SD Maid 2/SE published a 2.0 beta on 23 July 2026. CleanSweep reached its first stable 1.0.0 on 2 February 2026. disky woke up after nearly two dormant years with 2.x releases in April and May 2026. All three are free and open source. All three come with caveats, and the caveats are the important part.
This article is a check of what actually shipped, not a review. We did not install these apps and we are not reporting any personal experience with them. Every claim below is traced to a dated source: a release feed, a changelog entry or a store listing, with the month and year named. Where we could not confirm something, we say so plainly. For the standing shortlist rather than a news digest, see our best cleaner apps for Android roundup.
SD Maid 2/SE (package eu.darken.sdmse) moved from the 1.7.x line straight to a 2.0 branch. Version 2.0.1-beta1 was published on 23 July 2026, according to the project's GitHub releases feed. The previous stable line stood at v1.7.5-rc0 on 17 June 2026. APKMirror lists the same version for both the Play and the GitHub builds.
What the 2.0 branch adds, according to the changelog: a full interface and user-experience overhaul, a home-screen storage widget with one-tap cleanup, HEIC and HEIF image compression, settings backup and restore, duplicate detection extended to video and audio, and per-file selection in the Swiper tool.
Standing is good. It is free and open source under GPLv3, with source at github.com/d4rken-org/sdmaid-se. There are no ads. It works offline. An optional one-off paid Pro upgrade unlocks scheduling and automation. It is distributed on Google Play, F-Droid and GitHub.
Now the caveats, which are substantial. 2.0 is beta only. The stable channel is still 1.7.x, so a normal Play Store user does not receive the new branch unless they opt into the beta or sideload it. The 2.0.1-beta1 release notes are dominated by bug fixes rather than new features. And the deepest cleaning still requires root access or an ADB or Shizuku connection, which most readers will never set up. Without that, what you get is a competent but ordinary cleaner.
CleanSweep reached 1.0.0, its first stable release, on 2 February 2026. That followed a run of 0.9.x betas that began with v0.9.0 on 18 September 2025. Both dates come from the project's GitHub releases feed.
It is a media sorter rather than a junk cleaner. The headline mechanic is Tinder-style swipe-to-sort for photos and videos: swipe right to keep, swipe left to delete. There is one-tap move to favourite folders. It also does duplicate and visually similar media detection with adjustable sensitivity, plus a 'flag as incorrect' control that permanently un-groups a false match, so the app stops proposing the same wrong pairing again.
Standing: free, open source under GPL-3.0, fully offline, with no tracking, no analytics and no ads. It requires Android 10 or newer (minSdk 29).
The caveats are heavier than for SD Maid. It is sideload-only. The APK is published on GitHub releases, it is not on Google Play, and we could not confirm an F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid listing, which means no automatic updates. Around 100 GitHub stars indicates a very small userbase and little outside scrutiny of the code. The repository has been quiet since early February 2026, so momentum is unproven. One more trap: the app called CleanSweep on Google Play is Norton's unrelated com.symantec.cleansweep, which is a different product entirely.
disky (package de.felixnuesse.disky) had been dormant since May 2024. Its last release before the gap was v1.1.0 on 16 May 2024. Then a burst of work in 2026 took it to a 2.x line: v2.0.1, titled 'Speed!' and focused on faster scanning, on 15 April 2026; v2.1.0, titled 'Permissions!', on 19 April 2026; and v2.2.0, a maintenance release, on 31 May 2026. F-Droid published version 2.2.0 (build 15) on 2 June 2026.
disky is a plain storage analyser. It maps what is consuming your space by directory and includes per-app storage. It makes no promise to boost or optimise anything, which we count in its favour.
Standing: free and open source under GPLv3, source at github.com/newhinton/disky, Material You theming, distributed through F-Droid.
Caveats: it is F-Droid only, so most readers will need to install a second app store before they can install it. And it only analyses. It points at large directories, it does not clean caches or junk itself, so treat it as a diagnostic tool rather than a replacement for SD Maid or Files by Google. It is also a tiny project run by one developer.
Several obvious names were checked and deliberately left out, because a version bump on its own is not a story. Here is what we looked at and what we found.
None of these belong in a 'what is new' list this year. Saying so is more useful than padding the piece with them.
There is a wider argument worth reporting here. Android Police published a piece arguing that people should stop downloading cleaner apps because Android's own built-in tools are finally good enough. The case rests on Android 16 app archiving combined with on-device machine learning in Files by Google, which together leave little work for a third-party cleaner to do.
Our check lines up with that. The only apps in this category with real new work behind them in 2026 are open-source analysers and deep-cleaners. The ad-funded 'boost' apps produced nothing dated and nothing new.
A practical reading. If you stay on stable Play Store builds, nothing has changed for you yet in 2026, because the one meaningful upgrade, SD Maid 2/SE 2.0, sits behind a beta channel. If you are willing to opt into a beta, that is the release to watch. If your only question is where your storage went, disky answers exactly that and nothing more, provided you are comfortable with F-Droid. If your problem is a camera roll full of near-duplicates, CleanSweep is aimed precisely at that, with the sideloading and small-project caveats firmly attached.
We will revisit this when SD Maid 2/SE 2.0 reaches the stable channel. Until then, the shortlist we already stand behind is in our best cleaner apps for Android roundup.
Three of them. SD Maid 2/SE published a 2.0.1-beta1 build on 23 July 2026. CleanSweep reached its first stable 1.0.0 on 2 February 2026. disky shipped versions 2.0.1, 2.1.0 and 2.2.0 between April and May 2026. All three are free and open source. We did not install any of them; we checked what shipped and when, and traced each claim to a dated source.
Not on the normal stable channel. As of the 23 July 2026 build, the 2.0 branch is beta only and the stable line is still 1.7.x, so you would need to opt into the beta programme or sideload it. The deepest cleaning features also require root access or an ADB or Shizuku connection, which most people will not set up.
No. The APK is published on GitHub releases only, and we could not confirm an F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid listing, so there are no automatic updates. Be careful with the name: the app called CleanSweep on Google Play is Norton's unrelated com.symantec.cleansweep, which is a different app. CleanSweep also needs Android 10 or newer.
No. It is a storage analyser only. It maps what is using your space by directory and shows per-app storage, but it does not clear caches or delete junk for you. It is distributed through F-Droid rather than Google Play, so you would need that store installed first. It is a one-developer project.
We could not verify any. Its changelog entries are generic notes about interface improvements and bug fixes, and the automatic offload of backed-up photos on Pixel phones is the older Smart Storage feature from Android 12, not a 2026 addition. If a new feature did ship quietly, we found no dated source for it.