In working with the new-look File Explorer in the Beta Channel Insider Preview, I’ve come to a conclusion. It stands as the title for this blog post — namely, this: the new Explorer Address Bar is too spread out. IMO, anyway. Take a look at the lead-in graphic to see what I mean (new address bar top, old address bar bottom).

Why Say: New Explorer Address Bar Is Too Spread Out

The top of the image shows the address bar consuming about 3.8″ of the total 8.5″ display on-screen. By contrast, the bottom shows it consuming 3.125″. That’s a 21.6% bump in on screen size, most of which comes from wider spacing between path elements (and the > symbol that replaces the \ in a fully-formed directory path). Here are the paths for the two contrasting folders themselves:


new-style: C:\Utils\PowerPlans
old-style: F:\Nirlauncher\NirSoft\x64


This observed, the text displayed inside the address bar for File Explorer for each version is a little different, as you can confirm by inspection:

new-style: This PC > Local Disk (C:) > Utils > PowerPlans
old-style: This PC > OCZ3-120 (F:) > Nirlauncher > Nirsoft > x64


The upper display consumes more screen space than the lower even though it’s shorter (46 characters in the upper line; 53 on the lower, counting each space as a single character). Thus, it’s even more spread out than the visuals show by direct comparison. Because the upper string is 15% shorter, the expansion comes to roughly 40% (multiply 1.15  by 1.216).

Is Brevity the Soul of Wit?

Methinks that a more compact address bar makes it easier — and faster — to consume its contents. I’d urge MS to offer a compact version of the address bar as a tweak in future releases. If they don’t, somebody will probably do so in an add-on tool (e.g. WinAero Tweaker). I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens, perhaps in the upcoming 23H2 version of Windows 11. To that end, I hope somebody at MS is listening…

Note Added August 3

One person who read this post suggested that this spacing is designed to make touch access to the address bar easier. I buy the notion that added spacing makes touch more effective. But I still think MS should add a “compact address bar” option to its File Explorer controls so that those not using touch can elect a more condensed presentation if they want it. ‘Nuff said…

OK, then. We rolled back into the garage a little after 5 PM last night. We spent 4 glorious days in an around Marfa, TX. It’s an odd but charming hipster haven in the Big Bend region. This morning, I’m surveying the state of my slightly reduced PC fleet after my absence. I’m down to 9 machines right now, having returned a couple of loaners to Lenovo in hopes of some new review units in return. After OOO upgrade whirl resumes with a vengeance as I catch up on what I missed while gone.

Reporting on: after OOO Upgrade Whirl Resumes

Across my various PCs, I saw some auto-activity in Update history while I was gone. But as I worked with my PCs, each of them needed somewhere between half-a-dozen and ten upgrades/updates to catch up to the leading edge. In general, WinGet accounted for one to three of those items, WU for about the same, and SUMo for the rest.

Interestingly, Strawberry Perl had failed to update in WinGet and inside WingetUI just before I left town. I’d resolved to fix that this morning, but it seems to have fixed itself. WinGet did the upgrade job on its own with nary a hiccup nor error message (see lead-in graphic).

Across the fleet, here are the apps and applications I needed to update upon my return to “active duty” (in alphabetical order): Firefox, Driver Booster, Intel ARC Control, OhMyPosh,  Strawberry Perl, and Zoom. Given how long I was OOO (out of the office) I’d expected more. But hey, if I can take a break from the grind, so can everybody else, Cheers: it was fun to be gone, but it’s good to be back!

Last Friday, I learned about a new Beta Windows utility from Microsoft called “PC Manager.” It’s available for download and use right now on both Windows 10 and 11. There’s just one problem: I couldn’t get it to install from the download for either OS. But since I’m introducing Microsoft PC Manager here and now, you know I’ve figured out a workaround. Yep: there’s a Winget package for this tool, and it installs through that approach just fine.

Still Introducing Microsoft PC Manager, Despite Installer Fail

If you run the download file named MSPCManagerSetup.exe it simply hangs, even when you agree to its terms and conditions. It just sits there, doing nothing, like so:

Even after agreeing to the terms, the installer presents no option to actually install the tool. Stuck!

I figured there might be a winget package manifest for this tool, seeing as how it’s a Microsoft thing. I was right. It took a bit of poking around, but I eventually hit paydirt on the string “PCManager.” Here’s a screencap with the right install syntax (and a successful installation).

Winget install Microsoft.PCManager does the trick!

Again: Introducing MS PC Manager

Here’s what the startup window from the application looks like. It provides information into PC health, storage, processes and startup apps, as well as cleanup and security stuff.

OK then: here’s the home window for the Microsoft PC Manager (Beta) utility.

Health check takes a couple of minutes to run, and found excess files and baggage, as well as numerous startup items to cancel out. Storage Manger offers options for deep cleanup, large file management, app management and storage sense. Deep cleanup found and removed another 3.6 GB of “stuff” on my PC; large files created a single-pane display of all files over 100 MB on my system (you can set thresholds at 10, 50 and 100 MB, and 1 GB: pretty handy). Manage apps simply moves you to Settings → Apps → Apps & features, where you can review and manage what you’ve got. Storage Sense does likewise for Settings → System → Storage → Configure Storage Sense or run it now. All pretty handy, and worth fooling around with. Check it out!

In a future blog post, I’ll dig further into the Security button at the lower right. It has at least one interesting capability that I’ll also be writing about in an updated story for ComputerWorld soon (I hope).

In reading over yesterday’s news, I found Paul Thurrott’s story on GA for the Amazon Appstore on Windows 11. Being both curious and adventurous, I went ahead and installed same on one of my Lenovo test PCs (a beast: the P16 Gen1 Workstation with i9-12950HX, 128 GB RAM, 1.5 TB NVMe SSDs). There’s a little more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye, but things are arranged now so that for Windows 11 Android Subsystem gets easy-peasey. Let me explain…

What Android Subsystem Gets Easy-Peasey Means

Amazon has built its Amazon Appstore as a Windows Store download. If you grab and install it, and the Windows Subsystem for Android is absent on the target PC, the installer first makes sure this underlying environment is up and running. Then it installs itself. The whole process took about 3 minutes on the admittedly over-powered P16 Workstation. But it required no extra effort on my part to get the Amazon Appstore installed and running.

Just for grins, I downloaded and installed Wordle from the Appstore to make sure things were working. It’s been a while since I ran the Android version. I’d forgotten how obnoxious and ad-laden the free version of that app really is. Suffice it to say: NOW I remember!

Android apps run in their own self-contained windows on the desktop, inside the WSA (Windows Subsytems for Android) container process as shown in Task Manager at top.

Overall, Amazon has done an excellent job of making the install-to-download-to-desktop process simple, fast and easy. Feel free to give it a try on Windows 11. As far as I can tell it runs on all current versions, production and Insider Preview releases alike. Good stuff!