Summary
It’s easy to blame hardware whenever Windows starts dragging or when you don’t seem to get the best daily performance from your PC. This might push you to start exploring prices for RAM and larger SSDs. These changes will help, but I’ve found that the most immediate fixes don’t require a budget.
I habitually swap out four of Windows’ built-in tools and features. It doesn’t always give me a faster computer, but it makes everyday tasks feel less slow or more cumbersome than they need to be.
That 27-second wait isn’t a hardware problem
7-Zip finished the same extraction in about four seconds
I got accustomed to the crawling progress bar that follows extracting big files in File Explorer. Mid-extraction, I often have to find something else to do rather than stare at my screen. Since nothing actually feels broken, it was quite easy to accept it as normal.
Then curiosity got the better of me, and I ran the same archive through File Explorer and 7-Zip to see if I’d been tolerating any avoidable delays. The archive was a 590MB image folder containing roughly 50 files. I ran both tools on the same machine and compared the time they took to finish.
|
Tool |
Extraction time |
|---|---|
|
7-Zip |
~4.3 seconds |
|
Windows File Explorer |
~27.2 seconds |
This revealed 23 extra seconds in File Explorer for identical files. Twenty-three seconds doesn’t look like much, but this was just a 590MB extraction. My daily routines entail extracting several gigabytes, and this can add up to several minutes of avoidable delay.
After that, the built-in extraction feature became the first thing I replaced, and 7-Zip became my go-to. But this was just the start because it raised an honest question: if software can hide that much waiting in plain sight, what else could it be hiding?
7-Zip
- OS
- Windows
- Price model
- Free
7-Zip is an open-source file archiver that offers strong encryption. It compresses and decompresses files with a high compression ratio.
Windows Search only looks in a few places
Everything checks every filename on my drives
Almost every day, I run into a similar problem where I know exactly what a file is called, but still can’t find it with Windows Search. It will instead offer me apps, web results, and settings before the document that I need.
This may be partly due to its default scope, which indexes only the Documents, Pictures, and Music folders and the Desktop. The Enhanced mode helps it cover the entire PC, but I’d still rather use Voidtools’ Everything as my default search.
Since Everything builds its own database that includes filenames and paths from the NTFS file table, the matches appear almost instantly as you type. I don’t need to remember the exact folder. A fragment of the filename gives me a list that narrows with every keystroke.
For me, it’s become the better search for filenames, and has made that specific part of my workflow far less cumbersome than Windows Search. While finding became faster, there was another delay that needed a different tool.
Everything - OS
- Windows
- Price model
- Free
Everything is a Windows filename search engine that guarantees fast and accurate file search even without typing entire file names.
The page looks ready, but the browser isn’t done
Brave blocks ads and trackers before they load
When I visit websites I’m usually searching for a specific kind of content. It could be articles, videos, or something else. Windows defaults to Edge, which doesn’t block most ads out of the box, so ad-heavy sites mean sifting through clutter.
Brave, via its Shields feature, blocks ads and trackers by default. This offers a calmer page, and makes it easier to get to the exact content you need. So, Brave now takes the place of Edge for me.
The raw performance gains are less obvious. Going by Brave’s own September 2026 benchmark, which was run on a Mac mini, it took 2.4 seconds on Brave and 2.5 on Edge for first contentful paint; this is roughly the same time.
However, the gap starts to widen afterward. Pages finished loading in 4.4 seconds on Brave against 6 on Edge, with Brave pulling about 4.4MB per page against Edge’s 6.8MB.
What actually made me switch was the experience. Browsing the web feels more efficient on Brave than on Edge.
Brave is an open-source web browser focused on privacy, speed, and user control. Its standout features include Shields, which block ads, trackers, cookies, fingerprinting, and more by default, giving users granular privacy protection without the need for extensions.
The biggest delays were the ones I’d stopped noticing
File Pilot removed the extra steps from my folder routine
I spend the most time on my PC moving between folders. None of those steps felt slow, so I never thought the routine could be streamlined, but File Pilot cut them out.
I now keep both ends of a move open at once using tabs and flexible panels. I don’t have to juggle windows when I drag a file between folders. Because of its command palette, I now type what I want to do instead of digging through menus.
I don’t need File Pilot to find lost files because Everything already serves that purpose, but it helps me get around places that I already know. What made me swap File Explorer for File Pilot was how little effort it requires for the same routines.
File Pilot - OS
- Windows
- Price
- Free File Pilot is a lightweight, fast, third-party file manager for Windows. It’s designed as an alternative and replacement to Windows’ native Windows File Explorer. My upgrade wish list got a lot shorter Whenever an element of my workflow or computer feels slow, I now look for the quickest, effective fix first. In some cases, it’s hardware, but often I’m faced with an app doing the job the hard way. These are my go-to four swaps, but the more I use Windows, the more I realize something else may make performance better.