Xdn Tweaker is a free Windows tweaking program that can perform a number of useful and interesting Windows customizations. It features some interesting tweaks and a well designed interface.
I do not like most so-called Windows tweakers, and while I know that the more options a tweaker has the more it actually is able to do I find many of these programs to be (a) too much to handle because of all the possible configurations and tweaks, and (b) interchangeable; ultimately they all do the exact same thing, don’t they? The exception is Microsoft’s own TweakUI, which is a favorite of mine.
I recently tried Xdn Tweaker and liked it very much. The reason this one is different is that it seems to be a compilation of interesting tweaks that are presented in a very user friendly way. Each category in the left hand side panel contains 2 to 4 tweaks that are very well presented.
Here are some of my favorites:
- Removing Windows Media player entries from the right-click context menu. (Yesss!)
- Adding a context menu entry when selecting a folder to open a command prompt within that folder.
- Ability to switch on/off the option to view zip & cab files as folders in explorer.
- Increasing the number of folder views Windows will remember to up to 50,000. (Normally, Windows will remember your custom or default folder views for up to 400 folders in XP; after that, it may give you folder views which you do not want).
- The ability to remove any file extension association. Don’t want your .MOV files to automatically be associated with ITunes? You can use Xdn Tweaker to do it.
- Classic search: do you prefer Windows old classic search (the one with the cute puppy) to the new Vista-like search? Xdn can restore it as default.
- IE7 search box: Xdn can remove it for you (say, for example, you use the Google toolbar search and don’t care to have 2 search boxes showing).
- Remove “shortcut to” from being used by default in newly created shortcuts.
There are a number of other cool tweaks, but I will only mention these for now.
The verdict: Xdn Tweaker is a nicely designed program that is free and useful. Most importantly, it is user friendly and accessible and does not give you that overwhelming “everything thrown in but the kitchen sink” feeling that some other Windows tweakers do. Get it now.
Version tested: 0.8.7.7
Compatibility: Windows Vista and XP/2003, 32 and 64-bit.
Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 228K).
