Manage your apps and services with Task Manager

Task Manager makes it easy to see which apps and services are using the resources on your PC. And if you want to look at all the gritty details of what your network connections and hardware are up to, or manage the apps that run at startup, it's all easy to find and manage.

The first time you open Task Manager, you'll see a compact view of the apps that are running on your PC.

Fewer details view in Task Manager

If you want to see more info, tap or click More details.

More details in Task Manager

In this view, you can see and manage each thing that's open in each of your apps. In each row, there is info about each app and the resources it's using on your PC. The more an app is using of any resource, the stronger the color is in Task Manager. This makes it easy to quickly find apps that are using a lot of resources. The new Task Manager stops apps more quickly and reliably than before, so you can get right back to the things you want to do. If you want to see even more detail in this view, you can right-click or press and hold at the top of any column for more column options. You can also drag to rearrange the columns and get the view you want.

Apps from the Windows Store don't slow down your PC, so you don't need to close them for performance. When you're not using one of these apps, Windows will save it in the background and then close it eventually if you don't use it. If you really want to close an app from the Windows Store, you can drag it off the bottom of the screen. (With a mouse, click the top of the app and drag.)

To close an app in Task Manager, press and hold or right-click the app, and then tap or click End Task.

The Startup tab in Task Manager lets you view a list of apps that start automatically every time you turn on your PC and sign in to Windows.

Startup tab in Task Manager

If your PC is taking a long time to start up, one of the causes might be a large number of startup apps, or a few apps that have a high impact on the startup time. To disable an app from running when you start up your PC, tap or click the app, and then tap or click Disable. You can always enable an app again later if you decide you want it to run at startup.

The App history tab shows you how much data has been used by many of the apps on your PC. It includes data used by a metered network connection, such as 3G from a mobile operator. Because data on metered network connections sometimes leads to additional billing charges, you can use this tab to help keep track of how much data you've used.

If you're a more technical person and want to look at all that's running behind the scenes, the Performance, Users, Details, and Services tabs can give you the info you're looking for. You can view more details about what's running on your PC, how the hardware is running, and how much data is coming and going at any time.