FileWatchXP

Chances are you might want to keep a close eye on a particular folder to monitor changes. There aren’t really any Windows built-in features with which to make this possible, but there are third-party solutions. For instance, FileWatchXP can monitor entire drives, and have messages show up in specific circumstances.

Setup doesn’t take a lot of time, and once the application is up, it starts monitoring the target location. Don’t be fooled by the command-line interface, because it does show quite the variety of details. This isn’t all you work with, and you can access a set of preferences for general behavior, and what to monitor.

The associated context menu provides access to the configuration panel, while also letting you clean the log screen which updates in real-time, change the drive to monitor, whether or not to watch system folder, save the log file, wrap text, and close the program. Sadly, the application can only monitor an entire drive, and not just a custom folder.

Configurations show up in a separate window. It allows you to change the font color and type, just in case you want to be alerted in a particular style. Background color can be changed as well, but there are no transparency options.

There are some general behavior options as well. It’s possible to enable automatic save of log files at regular intervals, and even to delete them when they reach a particular size value. The application can be password-protected, and made to run with Windows. Notifications either come under the form of simple tooltips, or messages, but are only configurable for file deletion operations.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that FileWatchXP comes with good intentions, but is a little underprepared to fully deliver details related to file change. Sure enough, it shows everything going on with files, but it does so with all files inside a drive, and not just a folder of choice.