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Windows 8 Tips Part 18 – Customize Task Manager

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Task Manager in Windows 8

Windows 8 has redesigned the Task Manager. It’s better and more advanced than the previous versions of it. Did you know that you can customize Windows 8 Task Manager to your liking?

Take a look at the tabs along the top and you will notice (among others) Performance, Startup, App history but to name a few. (You might also want to read this post: Windows 8 Tips Part 16 – Change Startup Programs… But Where Is Startup?)

Moving Startup here makes sense, because I can now have a one-stop screen for most things application and process related. For me anyway, I want to tweak the Task Manager a bit to suit my preferences. This is quite easy enough to do.

Task Manager Process Grouping

By default, Task Manager groups processes into categories. With me being me, I don’t like this. I want to see everything ungrouped.

Task Manager Grouped Processes

To do this, click on View and the deselect ‘Group by type’.

Disable Group Processes Task Manager

This will now put all my processes as they were in older versions of Task Manager. I can now sort the processes alphabetically, by CPU or Memory usage etc.

Task Manager Process Names

Task Manager by default shows the process names. This is also not always optimal. I prefer to see the actual file names instead. Again we can change this quite easily. Right click on one of the columns. From the context menu that comes up, select ‘Process name’.

Task Manager Process Name Column

After doing this, you will see that a new column is added displaying the Process name.

Process Name Column Added

I prefer this configuration of the new Windows 8 Task Manager, but I also realize that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. At the end of the day, the added functionality and info in Task Manager makes managing Windows 8 easier.

What are your thoughts? Share below in the comments.

Reference: Whitson Gordon

Dirk Strauss
Dirk is a Software Developer from South Africa. He loves all things Technology and is slightly addicted to Jimi Hendrix. Apart from writing code, he also enjoys authoring books and articles. "I love sharing knowledge and connecting with people from around the world. It's the diversity that makes life so beautiful." Dirk feels very strongly that pizza is simply not complete without Tabasco, that you can never have too much garlic, and that cooking the perfect steak is an art he has almost mastered.
https://dirkstrauss.com

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