Portable OSHE: Hosts Editor

Windows doesn’t recognize web addresses as you do. Every domain is based on an IP, and this is how your computer identifies it. What’s more, there’s an important file in your system capable of monitoring these addresses, and even prevent you from landing there, but this needs to be manually handled. It can be a little tricky to work with the HOSTS file as it is, so you might find applications like Portable OSHE: Hosts Editor to be of great help.

As the name successfully points out, this is the edition of OSHE: Hosts Editor that doesn’t take you through a setup process, and can even be stored and used from an USB flash drive. Luckily, this also means that system registries are not a dependency, keeping the target computer clean.

The application knows exactly where to look for the HOSTS file on your system, so once it’s launched, content of the file is neatly displayed in the main window. You can either leave the table view on, providing more comfort and clear item identification, or switch to the text view, as you’d open the file in a plain text editor.

There’s no method to make a backup of the original HOSTS file from the application’s set of features, so you might want to go ahead and manually do this. However, you do have the option to revert changes to default configuration, which makes up for the missing backup function.

Adding entries to the list is incredibly easy. A compact new window is brought up when you press the add button, letting you write down IP address of the target, host name, as well as an additional comment for easy identification. Items can also be removed, either individually, or through multiple selection.

In case the HOSTS file is heavily populated with addresses and you want to look for a specific item, there’s a built-in search function to help you out. With three input fields, you can initiate a search by writing down either the IP, host name, comment, or all details together.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that Portable OSHE: Hosts Editor comes in handy for blocking different potentially harmful websites and domains, without having to navigate through system folders to find and edit the HOSTS file. The interface is clean and even beginners get the hang of how things work in little time.