Microsoft's PowerToys for Windows 11 and Windows 10 have been updated to the latest version 0.64.0, and a new feature called "File Locksmith" has been launched. So what is the use of this function?
Technically, it's a Windows shell extension that allows users to check which files are being used by which processes.
While most security butlers have similar functionality, in fact until today Microsoft has not natively provided a solution to find out the specific process occupying the file on Windows. While you can delete/shut down the current process via the task manager, it won't tell you what exactly is hogging your files so you can't delete them.
"the current file is in use" is a feature built into File Explorer, which can be used to reduce application crashes by default, but when you want to delete a file from the system and find the file When occupied, it can be annoying.
So, using File Locksmith in PowerToys, you can quickly find out all the running processes and find out who is actually using the files you want to delete.
The PowerToys File Locksmith function can also be quickly opened by integrating it into the right-click menu. You can select any file or folder and right-click on it to find out exactly which processes are using the file, as shown in the image below:
Once the process you're looking for is detected, you can also choose to kill the process by simply killing those tasks, or choose to click on the process to learn more about the application. Of course, you can also manually refresh the process list by clicking the "reload" icon.
The feature is currently still being tested in PowerToys, and all users can try it out from GitHub. At present, it is very unlikely that this feature will be integrated into Windows 11 in the future, at least in the near future, it is difficult to see this happening.
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