•Waterless cleaning process in this paper does not require any reagent.•Waterless cleaning Cu substrate can effectively reduce the nucleation density of graphene.•Waterless cleaning of Cu substrate is beneficial to reduce the cost of preparing graphene and reduce chemical pollution. A waterless cleaning method of Cu foil for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene growth is proposed in this work. In our method, the Cu foil is first annealed in high temperature air and then cooled rapidly, contaminated Cu surface layer was oxided in annealing and separated in the following cooling process, so as to get a clean Cu surface, the whole process does not require the participation of water and other reagents. Due to the influence of oxygen, the density of graphene domains on the waterless cleaning substrate is even lower than that on the polished substrate. Waterless cleaning provides a simple, economical and environment friendly.