The topic 4 ways this free Microsoft app fixed my slow, cluttered PC with one click is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
My old Windows laptop from 2020 had been sluggish for quite a while now, and I had almost come around to accepting the performance decay of its aging hardware. Having a lighting-fast desktop right next to it didn’t help, because I was constantly drawing comparisons that the old Lenovo has no business being on the losing end of. I had considered third-party “system boosting” tools, and briefly toyed with the idea of a clean Windows reinstall too. The former was ineffective, while the latter seemed like too much work on a machine with almost 5 years worth of data.
The answer to my responsiveness woes, however, was a free Microsoft app from 2022 that, for reasons I can’t explain, almost nobody knows exists. It doesn’t ship with Windows 11 Pro or Home versions by default, which is a massive injustice to how useful this utility can be. It’s called Microsoft PC Manager, and I’m almost surprised by how effective, user-friendly and powerful it turned out to be. Here’s everything it does well.
Most third-party apps I’ve installed over the years have a rather sneaky habit of requesting permission to launch on every startup, whether they need to or not. On my dedicated desktop with generous system memory, this is a manageable nuisance. On my laptop with its limited resources, however, it becomes quite annoying to deal with. Anyone who has ever dealt with three apps taking up their entire screen as they sign in to their account is familiar with the pain.
Windows Settings does have a “Startup Apps” page, and most would likely go there first. The PC Manager, however, does something that’s a little more useful. It tells you how long your last boot took (mine was about 29 seconds) and quantifies the impact of each startup app in terms of time saved, should you choose to disable it. This context is extremely helpful, as I can make an informed call on what was actually worth disabling, instead of getting rid of everything at once.
One of the problems with working on an old PC is gradually losing track of everything you’ve ever downloaded on it. It could be temporary files you needed once and never touched again, half-forgotten executables, and the occasional photos or video folder you’ve been hunting for across three separate drives.
Windows Search, at least on the latest Windows 11 builds, has been something of a disappointment in this regard. For a feature that’s literally named “Search”, it does a remarkable job of surfacing Bing results instead of indexing what’s on your PC.
PC Manager handles this infinitely better, as per my experience. You can scour any drive for large files and filter results by category. Documents, pictures, videos, audio, compressed folders and everything in between gets indexed, with an option to sort by file size. There’s also a dedicated section to find and remove duplicates, and a tool to clean up the Downloads folder that almost everyone ignores by habit.
Now, I’ve used my fair share of third-party “cleanup” utilities, so naturally, I was skeptical about a feature called “Deep Cleanup” (especially when it comes from Microsoft). It sounded like one of those buttons that would scan for temporary files, clear a few hundred megabytes and pat itself on the back for a job well done. The PC Manager, however, somehow found 24.1GB of clutter from places I had not bothered to look.
Most of the bulk was browser cache. Chrome alone had amassed 3.3GB and Edge and Firefox (which I haven’t used since install) contributed another 1.5GB for some reason. What’s interesting is that the utility also scanned the thumbnail cache, DirectX shader cache, Windows log files, and system error minidump files, each itemized with the exact size, so I knew what I was dealing with. A neat addition to this cleanup is that since every category has a checkbox, I can review the list and uncheck anything I’d rather hold on to.
I should probably temper the expectations upfront. This feature only freed up about 2% of system memory on my PC, which doesn’t sound particularly interesting. But I can also think of a situation wherein a user with a more memory-constrained machine finds this feature helpful, and this modest headroom can actually stand to benefit their performance.
For anyone (like myself) who is accustomed to opening up the Task Manager and manually cracking down on non-essential processes to claw back some more RAM, this seems to be a friendlier, one-click version of the same exercise. The returns won’t be miraculous, but it simply asks nothing of you in return.
It’s free, it’s built by Microsoft itself, and the worst thing that I can say about it is that some of these features could’ve easily been integrated into the Windows experience.
If you don’t trust other third-party alternatives and GitHub scripts for optimization, I won’t blame you. Microsoft PC Manager is perhaps created for those cautious and skeptical users who want to optimize their Windows PC, and it’s about as safe a bet as it gets. It’s free, it’s built by Microsoft itself, and the worst thing that I can say about it is that some of these features could’ve easily been integrated into the Windows experience rather than being put up on the Microsoft Store for you to stumble upon one day.
Microsoft PC Manager is a utility app for your PC. It offers features such as one-click boost, storage clean-up, file management, and protection of your default settings from unauthorized changes.