Which tool to use when

BRUTAL Optimizer ships with a lot of tools, and several of them sound similar ("Disk Cleaner" vs "Disk Analyzer", "Install Residue" vs "Disk Cleaner"). This guide cuts through that by starting from what you actually want to do and pointing you at the one right page — plus the honest note on what each tool will and won't do.

"I want my games to run smoother"

• Start with Optimize → Smart Optimize. It applies the right system tweaks for your hardware automatically.
• Turn on the Guardian (Guardian page) so it keeps optimizing while you play — tuning an Android emulator's priority and timer, and lowering background apps such as launcher web helpers and cloud sync (for Discord and Steam's web helper, only the parts that are not a call).
• Use Game Profiles / PC Games for per-game tuning of specific titles.
• Open the FPS Overlay (Ctrl+Shift+F) to watch your real frame rate while playing.

"I'm running out of disk space"

This is where the similar-sounding tools matter:

• Disk Cleaner — removes junk from an allow-list (temp files, caches, crash dumps, Recycle Bin) and reports the verified bytes freed. Start here.
• Disk Analyzer — shows you where your space went: a treemap of folders, your biggest files, and SHA-256 duplicate detection. Use this when you don't know what's eating the drive.
• Install Residue — finds leftover folders from apps you've already uninstalled. Use this after removing programs.
• App Updates isn't a space tool, but updating bloated apps can help indirectly.

"Something's wrong with my drive" / "is my SSD healthy?"

Open Drive Health. It reports SMART data, wear level, temperature, TRIM status, and fragmentation — read-only, so just looking is completely safe. For maintenance it does the media-correct thing automatically: ReTrim on SSD/NVMe, defrag only on a confirmed hard drive. It will never defragment your SSD, and the page explains why (see Our honesty promise).

"My internet / ping feels bad"

• Ping Test — quick latency check to 15 AWS regions, color-coded.
• Route Analyzer — the deeper tool: traceroute with bottleneck detection, a DNS benchmark, and one-click apply of the fastest DNS (snapshotted so you can always revert).

"I want fewer programs slowing my boot"

• Startup Manager — enable/disable other apps' startup entries (the same ones Task Manager controls). It never deletes entries, just toggles them.
• Process Rules — set per-app priority/affinity rules that the Guardian re-applies each cycle.

"I want more privacy"

Open Privacy Center for reversible telemetry, ads, and tracking toggles. Every toggle can be reverted to its Windows default. If you want ad/tracker blocking at the network level, that's done via filtering DNS — the app never edits your hosts file, which is a deliberate safety choice.

"My drivers are out of date"

Open Driver Update. It scans via Windows Update and, for NVIDIA GPUs, checks NVIDIA directly (NVIDIA drivers are reported for you to install from NVIDIA's own app). It creates a System Restore point before an install whenever Windows allows one, and nothing installs unless you confirm it or switch on automatic driver updates yourself (Pro).

"I just want to measure / monitor"

• Home — live CPU/GPU/RAM with sparklines, Performance Score, and Guardian status.
• Hardware Monitor — detailed real-time sensors (temps, fans, clocks).
• Benchmark — before/after snapshots so you can prove an optimization actually did something.

Best practice: a sensible first run

1. Optimize → Smart Optimize.
2. Disk Cleaner → scan and clean.
3. Drive Health → check (and ReTrim/defrag if it recommends it).
4. Driver Update → scan and install anything outdated.
5. Turn on the Guardian and play.

For the full safe routine with the do's and don'ts, see A safe optimization checklist.