RedditCommentCleaner v1.8

Bulk-delete your Reddit comments and posts. Each item is edited to "." before deletion to prevent content-scraping tools from capturing the original text.

Available in four forms:

Mode	Description
CLI	Interactive terminal scripts (commentCleaner.py, PostCleaner.py)
Web app	Browser dashboard — filter, select, and delete items visually
Android	Native Kotlin app with OAuth PKCE flow (android/)
CI/CD	Automated weekly GitHub Actions run (score < 1, or score == 1 + older than 14 days)

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Requirements

• Python 3
• praw (CLI / CI): pip install praw
• flask + praw (web app): pip install -r web/requirements.txt
• google-api-python-client etc. (Google Drive, optional): pip install -r requirements.txt

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Reddit API setup

1. Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps
2. Click Create application → select script
3. Fill in a name, description, and any URL (e.g. this repo) for the redirect fields
4. Click Create app — note the client ID (under the app name) and client secret

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CLI scripts

Both scripts accept a --dry-run flag to preview which items would be deleted without making any changes:

python commentCleaner.py --dry-run
python PostCleaner.py --dry-run

commentCleaner.py — delete comments

python commentCleaner.py

If Credentials.txt is present in the same directory it is read automatically; otherwise you are prompted. The file must contain exactly four lines:

<client_id>
<client_secret>
<username>
<password>

Deletion modes:

Option	Criteria
1	All comments older than N days
2	All comments with score ≤ 0
3	Score ≤ 1, no replies, older than 7 days

Each deleted comment is appended to deleted_comments.txt (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS | score | body).

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PostCleaner.py — delete posts

python PostCleaner.py

Same credential handling as above. Prompts for an age threshold and deletes all posts older than that many days. Logs to deleted_posts.txt.

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Web app

pip install -r web/requirements.txt
python web/app.py
# Open http://localhost:5000

1. Log in with your Reddit API credentials (never written to disk)
2. Click Load Items to fetch all your comments and posts
3. Use the filter panel (score ≤ N, age ≥ N days) or tick items manually
4. Click Delete Selected — deleted rows disappear from the table in-place

Logs are written to deleted_comments.txt / deleted_posts.txt in the repo root.

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Android app

A native Kotlin app that mirrors the web app. Uses Reddit's OAuth 2.0 PKCE flow (no client secret needed).

See android/SETUP.md for full build and run instructions.

Quick start:

1. Register an installed app at https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps with redirect URI redditcommentcleaner://auth
2. Add your client ID to android/local.properties (never committed): reddit.client_id=YOUR_ID
3. Build: cd android && ./gradlew assembleDebug

Play Store release: see android/SETUP.md for signing config, ProGuard, and the privacy policy requirement.

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Weekly automated cleanup (GitHub Actions)

The workflow at .github/workflows/weekly-cleanup.yml runs every Sunday at 00:00 UTC and can also be triggered manually from the Actions tab.

Deletion criteria (either condition triggers deletion):

• score < 1 (any age)
• score == 1 AND older than 14 days

Setup

Add these secrets in Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions:

Secret	Value
REDDIT_CLIENT_ID	Your script app client ID
REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET	Your script app client secret
REDDIT_USERNAME	Your Reddit username
REDDIT_PASSWORD	Your Reddit password

Running locally

weekly_cleanup.py also reads from Credentials.txt as a fallback when env vars are absent, so you can run it locally the same way as the other CLI scripts:

python weekly_cleanup.py

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Google Drive log upload (optional)

After each cleanup run (CI or local), deletion logs can be automatically uploaded to a Google Drive folder.

Setup

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com → create or select a project
2. Enable the Google Drive API (APIs & Services → Library)
3. Create a Service Account (IAM & Admin → Service Accounts → Create)
4. Generate a JSON key for the service account (Keys tab → Add Key → JSON) — download the file
5. In Google Drive, create a folder, share it with the service account email (give Editor access), and copy the folder ID from the URL: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/<FOLDER_ID>

For GitHub Actions

Add two more repository secrets:

Secret	Value
GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY	Full contents of the downloaded JSON key file
GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID	The folder ID from the Drive URL

If either secret is absent the workflow still runs — Drive upload is silently skipped and a message is printed in the log.

For local runs

Set the same two values as environment variables:

export GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY=/path/to/key.json   # or raw JSON string
export GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID=your_folder_id
python weekly_cleanup.py

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Backfilling historical logs to Drive

If you enabled Google Drive uploads after the weekly cleanup had already run several times, you can upload all past GitHub Actions artifacts retroactively:

export GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY=/path/to/key.json
export GOOGLE_DRIVE_FOLDER_ID=your_folder_id
python scripts/backfill_drive_upload.py

Requires the gh CLI to be installed and authenticated (gh auth status).

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Output files

File	Created by	Format
deleted_comments.txt	all scripts	JSON lines — one object per deleted comment
deleted_posts.txt	all scripts	JSON lines — one object per deleted post

Both files are excluded from git (.gitignore) and uploaded as GitHub Actions artifacts (retained 90 days) in addition to the optional Drive upload.