This Free App Unlocks Hidden Features on Your PC

Wintoys is a must-have Windows app that makes it easy to find the most useful tools on your PC. From clearing junk files and speeding up your computer, to helping you restart the graphics driver or even repair corrupted thumbnails, Wintoys makes many of these previously hidden features easily accessible...and it's free.

When you open Wintoys, the app shows you the most important specs related to your computer, including your processor, RAM, graphics card, and current version of Windows. It also tells you how many apps are installed; what percentage of processor, graphics, and memory are in use; and how many processes are running.

Wintoys also lets you remove unwanted apps and perform some basic cleanup to speed up your computer. To get started, click the Apps tab in the left pane to uninstall programs you don't need, then go to the Services tab and scan all running processes. There's an "i" button next to every service that tells you what it does. The app also has a filter called "Unnecessary," which helps you see services that aren't essential. You can read more about these and stop them if you want.

The Boost tab also has lots of performance-related options. For example, Startup Apps lets you quickly stop unwanted apps from starting when you turn your computer on. You can also look at visual settings and gaming settings to optimize your PC for performance.

Finally, you can also check out the Health tab and click "Declutter" to remove junk files.

Using Wintoys for repair and maintenance

Wintoys' Health tab has lots of useful options to help you troubleshoot problems, and the Repair function makes it easy to access common tools such as the system file checker (SFC) and check disk (CHKDSK) without using the command prompt. You should also use the Updates option to configure how you want Windows to download updates.

This tab also has two other useful options that allow you to restart the graphics driver and rebuild the icons cache on your PC. The former helps if you're seeing problems such as display flickering issues, while the latter is good for when thumbnails aren't loading correctly on your computer.

Find hidden settings

Windows has plenty of hidden settings pages that either let you enable useful features or disable annoyances. Wintoys has a Tweaks tab that puts many of these in one place. You can get started by focusing on Privacy and Ads, as these have settings to protect your data. Many of these features are set to share data about you by default, and you can disable almost all of them under these two menus.

The Desktop menu also lets you hide icons from the desktop and adjust the quality of your wallpaper. You'll also find the File Explorer menu useful for enabling things like showing file name extensions or revealing hidden files. You can also change the default page for Windows Explorer from "Quick Access" to "This PC" or "Downloads." Similarly, the System menu has lots of useful features such as God Mode, which places an icon on your desktop that can show a list of over 200 additional settings.