Microsoft PC Manager helps tidy up the inevitable muddle that clogs PCs: remnants of outdated updates, downloads, huge ZIP recordsdata that you simply downloaded, unpacked, and forgot about. But it’s now a basic tuneup app that may provide help to do all types of issues — even put a secondary toolbar in your desktop with shortcuts.
It’s honest to say that this app has flown beneath the radar: PC Manager debuted as a Chinese-language beta in 2022, and emerged last year on the Microsoft Store. Now, it’s a full-fledged, considerate utility with quite a bit beneath the hood. We’ll stroll you thru what it might do for you.
Naturally, any point out of PC Manager has to additionally point out CCleaner, the favored cleanup device that turned a lot much less beloved after Avast purchased it in 2017 after which accidentally bundled a Trojan-horse malware file inside of it. Now, Microsoft has stepped in. PC Manager jogs my memory a little bit of PowerToys — Microsoft’s toolbox of useful utilities — and a little bit of Microsoft’s Game Bar app, too.
The best approach to download PC Manager is by way of the Microsoft Store, which instantly downloads it on to your PC. It will ask on your permission to load itself whenever you boot your PC.
PC Manager: What can it do?
PC Manager consists of 5 totally different features: The Home display offers shortcuts to info and utilities that may enhance the efficiency of your PC. On the left-hand rail are 4 different deeper dives into numerous features: Protection, which faucets Windows Defender and Windows Update; Storage, which gives deep cleansing on your onerous drive or SSD; Apps, which seems to be at which apps run at startup; and a Toolbox of utilities.
The weirdest factor about PC Manager — which is on model 3.3, as of press time — is that your complete person interface is smooshed into a skinny wedge of your display, with no choice to enlarge it. That compresses various info in a small space; it might be good to have the ability to alter it.
The Home display is actually a dashboard, largely doubtless providing to offer your PC a “health check” and offering perception as to what’s occurring along with your PC. An enormous “Boost” button encourages you to spice up your PC’s efficiency.
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Choosing the “Health Check” possibility permits PC Manager to rapidly determine recordsdata that Microsoft deems worthy to delete: your Windows cache, your browser cache (presumably Edge, although this isn’t said), non permanent recordsdata, and so forth. It doesn’t actually do anything, at the least on the floor.
Microsoft doesn’t actually let you know why it is best to delete these recordsdata, merely assuming that you simply’ll need the additional house again. On my PC, the 1.2GB that PC Manager supplied to delete didn’t appear value it when it comes to house saving, primarily based upon the lots of of gigabytes of house my SSD allowed. But it rapidly deleted these “junk” recordsdata.
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The PC Boost part gives a “Smart Boost” that may kick in when there may be “high usage” of RAM or greater than 1GB of non permanent recordsdata. It’s off by default.
PC Boost seems to be prefer it merely eliminates some non permanent recordsdata, which on my PC took simply a few seconds. My reminiscence utilization shrank by just a few proportion factors, however that’s it. However, it is likely to be more practical for those who’re the kind of particular person with numerous random utilities, or who oversees a baby’s PC who can’t say no to downloading issues.
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Other parts simply provide you with a fast, easy-to-find take a look at a few of the parts of your PC. For instance, the “startup apps” button reveals what apps load whenever you boot your PC. (You can nonetheless entry these by way of the Windows Settings menu — however once more, “quick” is the watchword right here.) Disabling them will pace up your PC’s enhance time, although maybe at the price of performing background updates behind the scenes.
The “Deep Clean” possibility is one other device that’s replicated elsewhere, as a part of the Storage Sense device inside Windows. Again, Microsoft makes suggestions for recordsdata that you may safely delete, erring on the conservative facet. It even dives into the caches for numerous browsers and functions, like Photoshop or Mozilla Firefox.
It’s attainable that Microsoft would supply to delete recordsdata in my Recycle Bin if I had much less storage on my PC, nevertheless it didn’t achieve this this time.
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Speaking of storage, although: Make certain you take a look at the Storage tab on the left-hand rail. Here, you’ll discover hyperlinks to Storage Sense, your PC’s cleanup device, but additionally a nifty choice to “Manage large files.”
This lets you search your onerous drive or SSD for recordsdata which can be bigger than 1GB, say. It additionally lets you search by file kind. The message right here is that possibly you’ve gotten an outdated recreation file, or a LLM parameters file, or an outdated ZIP obtain — no matter. By figuring out these, you would possibly have the ability to regain some space for storing in massive chunks.
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The “System Protection” possibility is one other instance of gathering features which can be elsewhere in your PC, like Windows Security and Windows Update. Interestingly, clicking the Windows Update part doesn’t take you to Windows Update in any respect — it simply offers a listing of obtainable updates, and asks whether or not you need to set up them.
There are additionally a few options that aren’t apparent: “Taskbar repair,” which apparently repairs your taskbar, and pop-up administration, which “blocks pop-up windows in apps.” It’s not clear whether or not it is a conventional pop-up blocker, like in a browser, or whether or not this might block the Windows “ads” for options, which may typically seem in your Start menu.
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Under the Apps part, you’ll discover some instruments to inform which processes are at present operating (Task Manager, principally) and one other approach to handle your startup apps. The fascinating factor right here is that Windows truly tracks your startup time — mine was 5 seconds. There are shortcuts to the Windows Settings “Apps” web page in addition to the Microsoft Store.
The Toolbox part is the final, and it hides one thing fascinating: a floating utilities toolbar.
The menu itself teams collectively numerous features that Windows contains, however is likely to be hidden inside apps or behind forgettable keyboard shortcuts: Sound Recorder, the Snipping Tool, the automated captioning of video, Notepad, and Calculator. Microsoft guarantees to gather all of them in a toolbar that lives in your desktop.
Unfortunately, that toolbar was short-lived, popping up for a second within the backside right-hand nook of my main show, then disappearing. (It wasn’t minimized, and I didn’t have the “block pop-up windows in apps” possibility on, both.) It then, nonetheless, reappeared.
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The toolbar is fairly fundamental, and doubtless wants a little bit of tweaking to enhance its performance and utility. But it’s one thing just like the floating widgets of Windows builds of outdated.
So is PC Manager value protecting? I’ll go away it on my PC for some time and see the way it, like PowerToys, evolves. Remember, PC Manager is there to tweak an present Windows set up, particularly as you obtain apps and improve and set up patches. There might be occasions the place you’ll need to begin recent, with what’s often called a “clean install” of the Windows working system. That might be a way more intensive operation, however it can more practical than something PC Manager gives.
Still, one of many extra irritating features of Windows is how some actually strong options sadly change into buried within the interface. If PC Manager helps expose and remind customers that these options exist, all of us profit.