Simple Watcher

Simple Watcher is an advanced tool designed to monitor any drive or directory you specify, in order to record log details with file modifications, such as created, edited or removed files. It features comprehensive options for experienced PC users.

As long as you have .NET Framework installed, you don't need to set up anything else. You can save the downloaded .exe file in a custom location on the disk and double-click it to launch the utility. Keep in mind that administrative privileges are necessary to avoid any startup errors.

It runs in the systray, gets minimized there, and has a user-friendly window for keeping track of file modifications. Before starting the monitor, you can explore and configure a wide range of settings.

For instance, you can instruct Simple Watcher to include subfolders and folder events in the watchlist, customize the types of events to keep track of (create, delete, modify and rename items), exclude files by types, show or hide systray notifications, as well as play sound alerts on events and load a custom audio track.

It's capable of sending email reports or messages over the network, launching an .exe or .bat program, uploading files via FTP, as well as copying the files in question to a local, removable or network location.

When it comes to general preferences, you can enable or disable confirmation messages on exit, ask the tool to autorun at Windows startup, start minimized and run the monitor right after startup, use an animated icon, and automatically check for software updates.

Log details can be examined in a separate area and filtered by date and change type (file deleted, created or changed), as well as cleared.

To sum it up, Simple Watcher comes bundled with advanced, practical and approachable features for monitoring and logging file events, and it's free to use. CPU and RAM usage was minimal in our tests.