Windows System Control Center is a free program for personal use on Windows that you may use to explore, download, and use hundreds of the best free apps for the operating system.
The app brings together programs by popular developers such as Nirsoft, SysInternals, MiTeC, and others.
It is available as a portable application, but you can also install it. You may select the sources that you want included on the first start.
No apps are downloaded by default, but it takes just a click to add some or all of them to the PC.
While that is convenient, it does have downsides. The main one is that WSCC does not list the space that is needed to store all selected apps on the PC.
Most apps are relatively small, but you still end up with 340 megabytes worth of apps in the folder when you install them all.
You may also notice that some apps cannot be installed. This was the case for three Nirsoft apps that Windows Defender did not want on the system.
You may use the folders of the sidebar to explore and launch apps, or the built-in search.
Selecting a group in the sidebar displays information about the available apps. This includes a handy description of its functionality.
Note that the name of the app is listed on the right, which is a bit confusing, if you are browsing by name and not by description. A click on the name launches the app immediately on the system. A click on the question-mark next to a name opens the help file, if available.
Apart from acting as a launcher, WSCC can also keep apps up to date. Since they are all portable, it is often the case that they do not get updated frequently. The app informs you about updates so that you may install them.
Closing Words
WSCC is a handy program for Windows. While you can maintain your own list of portable apps, it is a great option to download and manage hundreds of popular free apps with minimal effort.
Now it is your turn. Have you used WSCC in the past or a comparable solution? Or do you prefer to download and manage apps individually?
ShareX 16.0.0 was released this week. The latest version of the open source screen capturing, recording, and sharing program for comes with a huge list of changes and improvements.
ShareX is a popular option when it comes to recording or capturing the screen on Windows. It supports a ton of capturing methods, from fullscreen and region to scrolling captures and even automated captures.
The application’s post-capturing options are equally impressive. These include options to edit images locally, use OCR for text detection, and upload the captures to the Internet. ShareX is a power-users tool.
Note: the release is already available on GitHub, but not on the official website.
ShareX 16.0.0
The latest version of ShareX comes with a long list of changes. Notable is that the developers have rewritten the application’s scrolling capture mode from scratch to improve it.
This allows users to capture an entire website or application, and not just the visible part.
The improved capturing mode has an entirely new algorithm that provides better detection and combining accuracy. It has a fallback option to the old algorithm if it fails. Some options were removed and the new algorithm tries to automate the process as much as possible to make things simpler and easier to use.
The entire process of combining images should perform better on user systems as well.
Scrolling capture has a few new options as well. It is now possible to delay the start, set the scroll delay and amount, and use automatic uploading or saving.
Video editor improvements — added AV1, NVENC H.264 & HEVC, QuickSync H.264 & HEVC, and AMF H.264 & HEVC encoders. There is a new “use bitrate” option to set a custom bitrate and to skip using the audio encoder for the files GIF, WEBP, PNG, or APNG.
Image editor — supports “proper” undo and redo now. Also new is a “load image from URL” button and the keyboard shortcut CTRL-C is now used to copy the image to the Clipboard.
Image beautifier — New tool to apply image effects to captures. This includes shadows, padding and margin, or making changes to the background.
Image effects — added several image effects to various sections, e.g., auto resize option to Shadow effects.
OCR — improved upscaling of images before applying OCR.
Closing Words
ShareX is an excellent image capturing and recording tool. The new version improves the program in several key areas. While I still prefer PicPick, ShareX is clearly an excellent tool when it comes to recording or capturing screens on Windows devices.
Now You: which screen capturing software, if any, do you use?
Spacedrive is an open source cross-platform file explorer that is powered by a virtual distributed filesystem written in Rust.
Note: the software is alpha at this point. It may contain bugs and issues, and its main purpose is testing at this stage. I experienced some hangs and issues during the test.
All modern operating systems come with file managers. Windows has its File Explorer, macOS Finder and Linux lots of them.
These file managers provide basic functionality. While that is usually sufficient to find, run, move or delete files, they are also lacking in many areas.
Windows’ File Explorer, for example, only lists data from connected drives. Anything that is not connected at the time is not displayed. Other issues may include a lack of organization, a messy interface, search that works so-so only or a focus on folders.
Spacedrive is a different kind of file manager
Spacedrive uses virtualization to display files from any location that you have added in the past. This can be folders and files from different local, removable or network locations, and even files from different systems.
This location-based approach changes a core characteristic of traditional file managers.
When you launch Spacedrive for the first time, you are greeted with emptiness. The file manager displays files only from locations that you add to its virtual filesystem. The first task, therefore, is to press the Add Location button to add a location to it.
The app supports local drives and partitions, folders, network drives as well as removable drives. Spacedrive indexes the content so that it remains visible in the app even after the storage location is disconnected.
The developers describe Spacedrive in the following way:
Organize files across many devices in one place. From cloud services to offline hard drives, Spacedrive combines the storage capacity and processing power of your devices into one personal distributed cloud, that is both secure and intuitive to use.
The Virtual Distributed Filesystem
At its core, Spacedrive’s virtual distributed filesystem (VDFS) is keeping a record of all storage locations that users added to the application. Record is another word for index. This index is not restricted to a single device or machine either, which is one of the main advantages of the technology.
The developers point to a UC Berkeley research paper by Haoyuan Li, which offers information on the underlying VDFS concept. The focus of the paper was on cloud computing, but the developers of Spacedrive say that the concepts apply to consumer software as well.
The core idea is not new. Applications such as DiskCat for Windows index drives or disks and make the data available even while offline. These solutions are not as advanced as this one and often not open source, but the main idea is similar.
What you can do with Spacedrive right now
The current version lets you add local and network locations to the virtual filesystem. Support for adding devices is coming in the future.
Select the add location option and pick a drive letter or folder on a connected drive. Spacedrive indexes the location so that it remains accessible, even if disconnected.
The app lists all indexed files in its interface. It supports three display modes currently: grid, list and media view. The first two modes list all files, the last only media files. Options to change the size of icons and sorting are also available already.
You may then browse individual locations or all data. A search is provided to find files across all locations quickly. Double-click on a file to launch it using the default file viewer or press the Space-key to display it in the program’s own quick viewer.
Options to edit files, e.g., rename or delete files, are also provided. You may add tags to files and create new tag categories. These may then be accessed in the sidebar directly.
A check of the preferences lists options to switch between light and dark mode, change display formats and even keybindings. There is a lot to explore already.
The future
The developers of Spacedrive have big plans for the app. The roadmap lists a key manager, to use encryption, an AirDrop-like feature and cloud integration as the next features in versions 0.2 and 0.3 of the file manager.
That is not all though. The roadmap reveals plans to add extensions supported, a media encoder, encrypted vaults, a timeline feature and much more.
Verdict
Spacedrive may not be ready for use in production environments, it is alpha software after all. It is one of those projects that you want to keep an eye on, as it is ambitious and could turn out to become an interesting app for many computer users.
Photographers or media archivers, for example, may use it to keep an always up-to-date index of all their media files, regardless of location.
