Microsoft Says This Free App Can Fix Slow PCs in One Click. I Had to Try It | PCMag
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Whether you're gaming and video editing or just browsing the web, Windows PCs often seem to slow down over time. You can always speed up Windows by adjusting various system settings, but that requires some clicking around. Meanwhile, third-party tune-up utilities, such as Ashampoo WinOptimizer, CCleaner, and Iolo System Mechanic, cost money. Microsoft's free PC Manager app claims to deliver the same performance gains with much less effort. It includes everything from memory management features to storage cleanup tools in a single, cohesive dashboard. It can even manage OpenClaw AI agents running on your PC. I tested its performance promises on my PC, and here's what I found.Getting Started With Microsoft PC Manager PC Manager is available to download from the Microsoft Store, which is where its dedicated web page takes you. The app is available on both Windows 10 and 11, but I recommend taking security precautions if you are still using the older OS version. The app works on both Arm-based and traditional x86 PCs.
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Upon first running the app, you see a Welcome experience dialog box with options for starting the app automatically when you sign in to a Microsoft Account. A check box option is available to restore the default settings for Windows, although I didn't select it because I had set up the system the way I wanted it. These boxes are checked by default, so be sure to uncheck them if they don’t work for you. You May Also Like
Once you pass through the Welcome panel, you will see the main utility interface, which features an exceptionally clear design.
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What Can PC Manager Do? PC Manager has all of the following components: PC Boost. This involves cleaning your system and optimizing performance. Health Check. Scan your computer for issues and malware. Manage Storage. Windows already offers the Storage Sense feature in the Settings app, which can automatically clean up unnecessary files, but the tools here go a step further. Pop-Up Management. You can use this tool to reduce distracting app notifications. Toolbar. The app can display a mini toolbar that shows your system’s status. PC Manager also offers a toolbox of system utilities, including auto-captioning for audio and video playback on the PC, a sound recorder, and more.Clawboard. PC Manager has a status dashboard for OpenClaw AI agents, showing their resource and token usage. It also lets you manually stop tasks or uninstall OpenClaw. Bear in mind that OpenClaw is experimental software with security risks.
Microsoft's Clawboard shows EasyClaw and OpenClaw agents. (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
I take you through my experience with each feature below.Boost Your PC Perhaps the most enticing aspect of the PC Manager’s interface is the big, light blue Boost button. When you press this, the utility frees up system memory by closing unnecessary processes and removing temporary files. An alternative option is Set Smart Boost, which detects high memory usage and automatically runs Boost.
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I checked my RAM usage in Task Manager before and after clicking Boost, and found a 5% reduction in system memory usage. I also ran the PCMark 10 benchmark before and after running Boost on my test PC. I use a Windows 11 machine with a 3.6GHz 12th-generation Core i7 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060i graphics card, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Here's the PCMark result before running Boost:
PCMark Scored before running Microsoft PC Manager (Credit: UL Solutions/PCMag)
And here it is after:
PCMark Scored after running Microsoft PC Manager (Credit: UL Solutions/PCMag)
As you can see, my result after running PC Manager’s Boost was 9 points better. That’s hardly a huge number, but some of the sub-scores show bigger differences. Oddly, some went down. The most notable improvement was in the Video Conferencing score, which bumped up by 5.3%. The Writing and Photo Editing results increased, respectively, by 1.8% and 0.5%. The biggest decrease was 2.7% for Spreadsheets, followed by 1.9% for Video Editing.Although I didn’t notice any significant performance differences, the improvement could be more substantial if your PC has less powerful hardware or is more cluttered. Health Check It may sound a little dull, but Health Check is one of the most useful and interesting features within the utility. It displays an animated visualization of system components as they are checked, and then generates a report highlighting areas for improvement.
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As you can see below, you can select categories for optimization and click Optimize Now. I had a significant amount of storage and usage traces (small files and settings that programs leave behind), as well as several apps to uninstall, since I hadn’t used them in over 30 days. PC Manager also checks your network; mine showed a green circle indicating an excellent status.
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You can click on the arrows next to each category for further explanations. I was curious about the default settings it wanted to restore and found that they were to reset the taskbar and to auto-start PC Manager, neither of which I wanted to do. Scrolling down in this window offers other useful system and settings information. For example, it displayed my system information, including the motherboard model, network adapters, and sound card. You can also view all the app data occupying space that the utility can delete for you, including items such as delivery optimization files, the DirectX shader cache, temporary files, and thumbnail files. You can run each optimization here separately. I ran all the recommended optimizations, and PC Manager reported that I freed up 9.1GB of disk space and cleaned out 2,915 usage traces.
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The app then identified a few other minor issues to clear up. I ran the system scan again and freed another 15.3MB of storage space and three usage traces—small beans compared with the first scan, but why not squeeze every last bit of system resources out of the PC? I ran PCMark again after this optimization, and found that performance improved more significantly than after just running Boost alone, by 48 points:
PCMark Scored after running Microsoft PC Manager's Health Check suggestions (Credit: UL Solutions/PCMag)
Once again, none of the subscores changed significantly, and some decreased slightly. PCMark calculates the main score to approximate overall performance, which, in this case, got a bump. Deep Cleanup The Deep Cleanup feature detected another 13GB that it could clean off my PC. This included more app data, such as caches. My biggest offender was Slack, which had cache data weighing in at 778MB. Deep Cleanup also searches for unnecessary system items, including log files, temporary files, Recycle Bin files, and Widget data.
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Storage Management You can dig even further into your PC’s storage via the Storage Management page. This section shows a graphic breakdown of your drive usage by application, other, Recycle Bin, system, and user. If you click on that chart in the main PC Manager window, a dedicated Storage Overview window opens. Here, you can scan for and clean up huge files, delete duplicate files, and manage downloads. I particularly like the Smart Select option, which allows you to eliminate duplicate files, saving you the time of examining them individually. Recommended by Our Editors 32 Hidden Windows 11 Features You're Probably Not Using (But Should Be) Overhyped and Underwhelming: 10 Windows 11 Features That Missed the Mark I Put 4 Windows Debloating Tools to the Test. The Results Were Embarrassing
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