Deleting temp files & folders?

I see there are a few different ways to delete temp files.

1) This shows up frequently & says temporary files are stored in two locations.
However there’s no mention about Temporary Internet files.
C:\WINDOWS\Temp (Windows temporary files)
and
C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Temp

2) Or go into Windows Settings > Storage > Temporary files.
Looks like it can delete Temporary files, Temporary Internet files, and several other groups of files. But there’s nothing listed regarding Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Temp

3) Or go to the C: drive > Properties > General > Disk Cleanup and select Temporary files, Temporary Internet files, and whatever else you want,. But again nothing regarding Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Temp

Is there a “Best Practices” or safest way to remove all Temp files that are not needed?

One of my friends used a cleaner program a few years ago. He said it asked him a lot of questions on what to remove. He said if he knew what was safe to delete he would not need the program.

I would think a Windows based program would be the safest & am presuming it would not let you delete something that's needed. However if using Disk Cleanup it seems strange that Temporary files is not checked by default, & that Downloaded Program Files is checked. This make me question what's safe to delete.

I compared Disk Cleanup with Settings > Storage > Temporary files.

Thumbnails, Delivery Optimization Files, Temporary Internet Files, DirectX Shader Cache, & Recycle Bin are the same or almost the same.

Windows error reports and Temporary Files are a lot different.

Windows error reports were 297KB for Disk Cleanup vs 1.84MB for Settings > Storage > Temporary files.
Temporary Files were 2.46MB for Disk Cleanup vs 8.59MB for Settings > Storage > Temporary files.

FWIW, the Windows\Temp Folder is 11.8 MB and the C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Temp folder is 240 MB.

Curious why neither one addresses C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Temp.

Does Temporary Internet Files show just the data for Edge, or would it also include what's in Firefox?

I see this in some examples where it shows "Windows Update Cleanup", but I can't get that to display no matter what I try, including run as administrator. Could it be that I haven't updated in long time & those files have been automatically deleted?

To get to that screen try this:

Open a command prompt as administrator.
Enter this command:

cmd /c cleanmgr /d c /sageset:65535 & cleanmgr /sagerun:65535

You can now check any options you wish. Among the options should be the Windows Update Cleanup.

NOTE: I find that this does not do a good job on cleaning the %temp% folder, but your milage may vary.

The first command did bring up the Disk Cleanup box with Windows Update Cleanup. However none of the options indicated how much space they were using. Some boxes were checked & I checked a few, but there was no usage shown.

The second command did a cleanup. The wording flashed on the screen too quickly to read it exactly. But when done I went back to the normal Disk Cleanup app & it showed 488MB used. The other day I had 497MB used. Whatever it deleted wasn't much. OTOH I didn't want to delete anything until I know exactly what is going to be deleted.

- - - Updated - - -

I saw a couple comments that said the only downside to removing “Windows Update Cleanup” files is that you may not be able to restore previous versions of Windows.

If I go to Recovery > “Go back to previous version of Windows“, it says “This option is no longer available because your PC was updated more than 10 days ago.”

Does that mean my Windows Update Cleanup files were automatically deleted because they were considered “old” after 10 days?