Task Manager was the Windows app I never knew I needed to replace — until I tried this alternative

Some default Windows tools aren't as good as they can be, and there are several alternatives you could choose from to boost your productivity and performance. Still, there are a few first-party apps that work just fine and don't need a replacement.

Take Task Manager for instance — in all my years of using Windows, I've never once considered a replacement for this app, because why would I? It is a great all-round utility tool with a lovely UI, tabs for resource usage, startup apps, processes, details, services, and so on.

That was, until I came across AppControl and realized how much power and insight I could have over my PC.

Task Manager hides more than it shows

Services you can't find and management features you were missing out on

Windows 11 isn't perfect by any means, and even though Microsoft has only now picked up the pace with the improvements, I still face several issues.

Task Manager doesn't provide a comprehensive overview of historical crashes, making it difficult to diagnose issues. Aside from that, there's a vast range of services that, for some reason, Task Manager hides from me. Service management isn't exactly efficient, since you can't batch-select and make changes. The process details are also limited, and Task Manager doesn't surface detailed metadata such as the signature, publisher, etc.

Then again, these issues were all I found out after switching to AppControl, whereas before, Task Manager felt perfect to me.

AppControl offers real-time tracking of processes

You get detailed insight, tracking, and launch details that Task Manager skips

AppControl does everything that Task Manager does, but it takes it up a notch.

You can view detailed information on services, activities, permissions, package control, and more in AppControl, with real-time monitoring. AppControl shows you 250 processes individually, with their creation date and time, publisher, and who launched them. Task Manager hides the majority of these processes because some are system-protected or processed under a parent-child relationship.

The Activity tab is also a handy feature — every time your PC performs an action, you can view the changes and ask the tool to send a notification. I've set an alert for every time a new or suspicious app launches so I can ensure that it isn't malware or something I didn't install on my system.

In the Alerts tab, you can see when an app started, which permissions it requested, and whether they were location access, the mic, or the webcam feed.

As a gamer, the best feature in AppControl I found was the history of CPU and GPU temperatures. It helps me paint a clearer picture of what was causing spikes in usage and which programs were using the most hardware resources and overheating — something Task Manager can’t do.

Managing apps and permissions is so much easier now

The Apps section in AppControl gives a detailed overview of all applications and each individual process they run. You can view apps by permission, which ones are accessing location, webcam, etc., and see any sort of events your PC may have associated with those applications.

All the apps are grouped by publisher, with several services listed under that specific app.

You can properly kill a certain app that may be hogging resources, or disable it; it can only be started again once you re-activate it yourself.

App Control can talk to Claude about your PC

Hook up Claude via the MCP extensions and start asking questions

AppControl's open-source AI MCP extension might be the app's best feature. Once connected to an AI model like Claude, Gemini, or more, you can let it review your PC's history and chat to ask about performance or a problem you may have experienced, e.g., an app crashing.

I connected AppControl to Claude, and you'll specifically need the desktop version for that. Then you can proceed with these steps.

1. Enable AI Assistant Integration from Settings.
2. Download the MCPB package from the GitHub repository.
3. Open Claude Desktop and load the extension.
4. Restart Claude and ask Claude any questions about your PC's performance by mentioning AppControl in the prompt.

To test it out, I asked Claude why my RAM usage was so high, and in another prompt, I asked for my average GPU temperatures for the past 15 minutes. For future app crashes or my PC acting up, I'll be sure to ask AppControl via Claude for the reason and save myself the headache and hours of manual diagnoses.

AppControl has replaced Task Manager for me, but it wasn't a simple answer

AppControl is free, straightforward, and quite easy to use with a simple, clean UI and multiple tabs split by function. For lower-memory setups, AppControl can be a bit taxing on RAM, but you can set Performance Mode in settings to reduce animations and lower the strain on your setup.

Other limitations include a lack of control over startup apps and an inability to show system specs. AppControl isn't perfect, but it's free, and with all the other upsides, it has most certainly replaced Task Manager for me, and I'm seeing a whole different world that I couldn't see before.