Windows has always come with a native task manager application that can be launched in many different ways – using a hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting Task Manager and from the notifications bar. But it has always stayed a native Win32 application – from Windows 2000 (perhaps even before that) to Windows 10. Now a Microsoft Employee, Andrew Whitechapel, has decided to create a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) version of the Task Manager and has come up with uTaskManager – Universal Task Manager.
It gives you the same features as the traditional Task Manager but offers a much cleaner and tidy interface. It integrates newer ways to control the app – for example, you can swipe left and right to navigate through different tabs like – Processes, Apps, Details, Installed, System, Settings etc. You can see all the processes, apps, installed programs and their details using uTaskManager right away. Compared to the regular Task Manager, it does not offer any way to look at the services, auto-starting programs, and various performance profiles or resources being used by the system. Another easily observable difference that anyone can spot is that you may not be able to close down a process.
Under the “Processes” tab, it displays both the UWP apps and the Win32 applications. In the “Installed” tab, uTaskManger lists installed programs and apps. The “System” area reveals details about the Windows PC, such as the exact Windows version, memory usage or details about the network. In the settings you can specify how often uTaskManager updates the data from the Windows system and the preferred starting tab.
Even though it appears to be similar to the traditional Task Manager, it fails in many ways to come close – it cannot stop some processes and does not populate the list with all the installed programs. Perhaps these bugs will be removed in the future versions.
You can get uTaskManager for Windows 10 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/utaskmanager/9nhvdhfbxrsv.