multiple .jxbrowser -* folders are eating my drive space

[Al-E-Bags]

Hi all.  I have been witnessing a rapidly shrinking amount of free space on my C drive.  On a regular drive clean up of non-essential data, I can generally remove 1 Gigabyte or so of temporary files.  This however, does not account for the rapid depletion of available free space. 

On further investigation, I looked into the 'Other' (Manage other large folders) section of the 'System -> Storage' properties of my Windows 11 C drive.  I was a little gob-smacked to discover that - between them - the ST related folders: stm32cubeide, stm32cubemx, STM32Cube and ST contain over 100Gb of data.

Obviously allowing for software packs and the various STM applications in daily use, I found a considerable amount of data was held in several .jxbrowser folders across more than one location.  For example, the .jxbrowser-7.38.2 folder inside the stm32cubemx directory - alone - is at a whopping 17.5Gb.  I don't see any way of cleaning them or whether or not it is safe to do so but I read elsewhere (on other sites) that they should be left alone.  The screen grab below indicates the total size of the multiple .jxbrowser folders in stm32cubeide: 

 Does anyone else have any experience with this?  Better still, if there is a solution I would love to know what it is, hopefully before my drive gets chockers-full.   Thanks in advance.     

[Kraal]

Hi @Mahmoud Ben Romdhane 

Thank you for your answer.
This means that we can delete the folders under "Profile" without any consequences on our work, is this correct ?

If so, why CubeMX does not empty "Profile" at every closing ?

Is this the official internal ticket status / answer ?

Best regards.

[diverger]

Then, what's the case with CubeIDE?

[michaelmac]

hi Mahmoud, 

Thanks for the reply.  I use STM32CubeIDE 1.12.1, and don't think I've ever closed via task manager. There might have been times were my PC has restarted while the ide was still open. But if happens, would the next time i open then close the IDE normally then delete all the folders? 

Regards,

Michael. 

[Kraal]

I looked more in details in my "jxbrowser" folders.

First of all, it is related to CubeIDE, not (standalone) CubeMX, as it sits in \username\.stm32cubeide\

Then there is a version number append to the jxbrower, in my case .jxbrowser-7.30.2 and .jxbrowser-7.35.1
I believe this version number is bumped when you update CubeIDE (but that is to be confirmed).

As @michaelmac I never ever close CubeIDE through the task manager, I always perform a clean exit.
So what you claim @Mahmoud Ben Romdhane is not true regarding the autodelete fo the folders.

If you look into each jxbrowser folder, you will find a working copy of Chromium. Do we really need to have a copy for each jxbrowser folder ? Can't it be rationalized in 1 level above ?

And in the profile folder itself, I can see that each subfolder is created everytime I launch CubeIDE, and its name is the UNIX timestamp of the launching. In .jxbrowser-7.35.1 on my computer I have 700 folders like this, since I use the tool at least once per day.

@Mahmoud Ben RomdhaneWe need a clear answer from ST regarding this issue:
- Is it safe to delete old folders ?
- Will ST fix this behavior and auto delete the created folders when CubeIDE is exited ?
- Could it be related to the data collection ? It is stated "Finally, note that when interacting with STM32CubeIDE we collect non-personal data that we use for the purpose of qualitative media monitoring analysis and internal reporting." in stm32cube-data-collection-information 

[Mahmoud Ben Romdhane]

Hello,

In fact, if users save their ST login information, folders into Profile are not being deleted after closing.

Folders under "Profile" should be automatically deleted after closing STM32CubeMX standalone or STM32CubeIDE.

This problem has been reported to the development team, and I'll let you know once it's fixed.

You can delete manually the "Profile" and not the JxBrowser folder itself.

Thanks