steam-tracer-cleaner

Cleans Steam account residue and installs autoexec / video configs. Single-file Windows executable, no installer, no telemetry.

Download

Grab the latest steam-tracer-cleaner.exe from the Releases page. The binary is statically linked, so it runs on any 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 install with no Visual C++ Redistributable required.

On first launch Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" because the binary is unsigned. Click More info then Run anyway. Code-signing certificates are not free; this is normal for small open-source Windows tools.

What it does

Three things, picked one at a time from the left-nav.

Cleaner. Walks a known catalog of Steam artifacts and removes the ones not on your preserve list:

• loginusers.vdf entries, ssfn* files, HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam\Users\<SteamID64> subkeys
• AutoLoginUser — redirected to a preserved account when the active account is being wiped, so Steam reopens to a saved login instead of the blank login form. The matching mostrecent / Timestamp in loginusers.vdf are flipped onto the new target so Steam actually picks it. Left untouched if no preserved account is available.
• htmlcache/ (Chromium cache for the in-client web view, leaks logged-in cookies)
• dumps/, logs/, appcache/, depotcache/, shadercache/ on every Steam library drive
• Cached avatars in config/avatarcache/ — files named <SteamID64>.png belonging to a preserved account are kept in place, the rest go (Steam re-caches them on next launch anyway)
• userdata/<AccountID>/ per game or wholesale, depending on the profile
• Steam-related minidumps in C:\Windows\Minidump, %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps
• Steam web sessions in Chrome / Edge / Brave / Firefox cookie databases

Configs. Two modes:

• Autoexec: pick a .cfg, the tool writes it to the game's cfg directory (default CS2 path: steamapps/common/Counter-Strike Global Offensive/game/csgo/cfg/autoexec.cfg). Existing file is backed up first. The destination filename is editable — handy if you want to chain configs via exec a.cfg from another file.
• Video config: pick a cs2_video.txt, multi-select target accounts, the tool writes it to each userdata/<AccountID>/730/local/cfg/cs2_video.txt.

Imported .cfg and cs2_video.txt files are kept in a per-user library at %APPDATA%/steam-tracer-cleaner/configs/, so you can re-pick the same config across runs without re-browsing. Installing a config closes only the target game (e.g. cs2.exe) — Steam stays running.

Audit. Read-only. Inventories what's on disk, lists every Steam account it sees, displays MachineGuid / MachineId / HwProfileGuid, exports a text report. No writes, no registry changes.

Update check. On launch the app fetches https://api.github.com/repos/luminary-cloud/steam-tracer-cleaner/releases/latest. If the tag is newer than the version baked into the .exe, a modal pops up with Open releases, Skip this version, and Remind me later. Skipping persists the tag in settings.json so the same release stops nagging. The check runs once per launch on a background thread and stays out of the way if the network is down or GitHub is unreachable. Can be turned off entirely in Settings.

What it doesn't do

• No HWID spoofing. The audit page shows the values, that's it.
• No bypassing of VAC, Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, or any anti-cheat. This is a file cleaner.
• No bundled cheats, configs, or scripts beyond what you supply.
• One outbound HTTPS call on launch to api.github.com to check for a newer release tag — nothing else. No analytics, no telemetry. Untick Check for updates on launch in Settings if you'd rather it stay silent.

First run

The app requests UAC elevation on launch — registry edits under HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam and writes to per-account userdata need it on some setups.

1. Launch steam-tracer-cleaner.exe. The window opens on the Cleaner screen.
2. Open Settings in the left-nav. Add any SteamID64s you want to keep across cleanups under Preserved account ids. Tick Preserve all ssfn (Steam Guard sentry) files if you want to skip the 2FA prompt on next login. Tick Register scheduled clean on logon if you want Quick Clean to run automatically at user sign-in — this creates a SteamTracerCleaner-LogonClean task in Task Scheduler. Untick Check for updates on launch if you'd rather the app not talk to GitHub. Click Save settings.
3. Back on Cleaner, pick a profile from the dropdown:
   • Quick Clean: caches, logs, dumps. Safe daily use.
   • Account Reset: Quick + account residue (loginusers, AutoLogin, ssfn, htmlcache, browser cookies). Preserved accounts survive.
   • Full Wipe: Account Reset + userdata folders + controller bindings. Preserved accounts still survive.
   • Game Reset: pick AppIDs to wipe just those games' userdata.
4. Click Dry run to see the list of files / registry values that would be touched. Nothing is deleted.
5. Click Backup and clean when you're ready. Steam is auto-closed first; affected files and registry keys are mirrored to %LOCALAPPDATA%/steam-tracer-cleaner/backups/<timestamp>/; then the deletes run.
6. If something went wrong, open the Backups screen and click Restore on the most recent timestamped entry.

Why an ignore list

If you keep more than one Steam account on a machine and only want to scrub some of them, a wholesale wipe of HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam\Users and AutoLoginUser will log you out of the accounts you wanted to keep. The cleaner reads ignore.json first and only acts on entries whose SteamID64 is not on the preserve list.

ignore.json lives at %APPDATA%/steam-tracer-cleaner/ignore.json (or next to the .exe in portable mode):

{
    "preserved_account_ids": ["76561198000000000"],
    "preserved_ssfn_files": true,
    "preserved_paths": [],
    "preserved_registry_values": []
}

A SteamID64 in preserved_account_ids survives across:

• The matching loginusers.vdf entry
• The userdata\<account_id>\ folder
• The HKCU\Software\Valve\Steam\Users\<id> registry subtree
• Controller bindings in that account's userdata
• The cached avatar at config\avatarcache\<SteamID64>.png
• AutoLoginUser, RememberPassword, and LastGameNameUsed — kept pointing at this account when it's the current AutoLoginUser, or redirected here from a wiped account when another preserved account is the active one. The matching mostrecent / Timestamp in loginusers.vdf get flipped too, so Steam actually auto-logs in instead of falling back to the login form.
• remoteclients.vdf and coplay_* files (preserved when any account is in the list, since they can't be cleanly split per-account)

Build from source

The project is self-contained. Every dependency is vendored under third_party/, so there's no vcpkg, Conan, or git submodule to set up.

Visual Studio (recommended)

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 17.x or 2026 18.x with the Desktop development with C++ workload.
2. Open steam-tracer-cleaner.sln.
3. Set the configuration to Release | x64 and hit Build (F7).

The binary lands at build/Release/steam-tracer-cleaner.exe.

CMake / Ninja

For headless / CI builds:

cmake --preset release
cmake --build --preset release

The binary lands at build/release/bin/steam-tracer-cleaner.exe. The CMake build also compiles the tests/ directory; run ctest --preset debug to execute the unit tests.

Project layout

app/         WinMain, D3D11 device, message loop
core/        cleaning logic, profiles, ignore list, VDF helpers, autoexec, update check
platform/    Win32 wrappers (registry, fs, process)
ui/          ImGui screens, widgets, embedded GitHub footer icon
tests/       doctest unit tests (CMake only)
third_party/ vendored deps: imgui, spdlog, nlohmann_json, sqlite, doctest
assets/      app icon (compiled into the .exe via app.rc)
cmake/       shared compile options

The core/ <-> platform/ split means cleaning rules can be unit-tested without a Win32 message pump.

Safety

Every destructive action is gated by:

1. A dry-run preview that shows the exact list of files / keys / values it would touch.
2. A backup step that mirrors the affected paths to %LOCALAPPDATA%/steam-tracer-cleaner/backups/<timestamp>/ before deleting. One-click restore from the Backups screen. Old backups beyond the configured keep-count are auto-pruned after each successful run.
3. An auto-close step. The Cleaner sends WM_CLOSE to Steam and every known game executable before any write (TerminateProcess fallback after a 5-second timeout) — it has to, because Steam rewrites loginusers.vdf and localconfig.vdf when it exits. The Configs screen closes only the target game (cs2.exe for video configs, the matching exe for autoexec) so installing a config while Steam is running doesn't drop you out of the client.
4. A rotating log at %LOCALAPPDATA%/steam-tracer-cleaner/logs/<name>.log recording every action with timestamp, target id, result, and Win32 error code if applicable.

Portable mode

Drop a file named portable.flag next to the .exe. Settings, profiles, ignore list, backups, and logs all live in the same folder as the binary instead of %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA%. Useful from a USB stick or a sandbox.

Vendored libraries

Library	License	Used for
Dear ImGui (docking)	MIT	UI
spdlog	MIT	logging (header-only mode)
nlohmann/json	MIT	config files
SQLite amalgamation	Public domain	browser cookie DBs
doctest	MIT	unit tests

License

MIT.

Contributing

Pull requests welcome. Code style: clang-format config is at the repo root, clang-tidy is set up for bugprone-* / cert-* / cppcoreguidelines-* / modernize-*. Tests run via ctest after a CMake build.