Free Folder Monitor

If you're curious about the type of file operations that are automatically performed by the operating system or applications, you can resort to a directory watcher.

This type of forensics software is able to monitor a specified location and create a log with the modifications. For example, you can find out what files were created, modified, deleted or renamed.

Free Folder Monitor is an easy-to-use tool that comes packed with several entry-level features to help you keep an eye on any directory and view the activity of the computer when it comes to created, edited, removed or renamed files and folders. It can focus on any drive or directory indicated by you.

The installation process is a bit tricky. Because Free Folder Monitor is ad-supported, it offers to download and install other tools, which it doesn't actually need to work.

This is why some anti-malware programs see it as infected. However, you can decline the offers to make a clean setup and keep your PC free of adware.

Following the installer, you're greeted by a user-friendly interface, where the C: drive is monitored by default and you can view all changes in the main window. The log is updated as soon as a new modification occurs.

You can check out the timestamp (date and time), action (add, modify, remove), file name and type, full path, size, date of last modification, and file attributes for each event.

The entries are color-coded so you can easily tell apart actions involving files (blue), directories (green) and removed entries (red). The status bar shows the total number of events.

From the "File" menu, you can deactivate the real-time monitor (so you don't have to exit the app), set a different drive or folder to monitor (instead of the default C:), clear the log, and view the properties of any selected entry (the "Properties" dialog from Windows Explorer).

From the "Filter" menu, it's possible to exclude subfolders from the monitor, prevent the app from logging any actions when it comes to added, removed, modified or renamed items, as well as disable notifications for the file or folder name, attributes, size, last write, access and creation time, and security.

To wrap it up, Free Folder Monitor delivers a simple interface and approachable features to help you watch directories for changes. However, it doesn't have more advanced options, such as setting actions to trigger on events.