H4shG3n

Hash codes are used for verifying a file’s integrity. In other words, if you receive a file, you can check whether it is identical with the original by comparing checksums. If the two values are not the same, then it is highly possible that the file has been tampered with.

While Windows comes with a command to view the MD5 hash code of a file, using a GUI-based application is much more convenient to many. The purpose of H4shG3n is to provide a lightweight, portable and simple hash code generator that can computer checksums quickly, without a lot of hassle.

As mentioned above, the application is portable, so there is no need to go through an installation process. You simply double-click on the main executable to have it run.

To get a file’s checksum, you must drop it onto the main window. It is a bit strange that there is no option to open a file the traditional way, via Windows Explorer, but that is a small inconvenient that should not bother you at all.

The main window immediately reveals the hash codes of the selected file. H4shG3n provides support for multiple hash types, namely CRC32, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256.

Given that the first is less used than the other three, CRC32 is disabled by default, but you can easily check it to have H4shG3n display this checksum as well. Annoyingly enough, the file must be dropped once more to display the CRC32 hash after checking its box.

The list of hash codes can be easily copied to the clipboard or exported to file, for later use.

Written in Lua, H4shG3n is nothing more than a simple hash generator and viewer with support for the most popular checksums. It is one of those small but useful applications, handy to have around.