Hosts file management for Windows machines with a GUI and productivity features.
WinHosts Manager is a graphical user interface (GUI) tool designed to simplify hosts file management on Windows machines. This productivity-focused application streamlines the process of editing and managing host entries, eliminating the need for cumbersome manual edits with elevated privileges.
Key Features:
Graphical Interface: Offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for visual editing of host entries.
Administrator Privileges via UAC: Automatically obtains necessary privileges at launch through Windows User Account Control (UAC), reducing friction in the workflow.
Enable/Disable Entries: Quickly toggle host entries on or off without modifying the hosts file directly.
Immediate Application of Changes: Edits are applied to the hosts file instantly, ensuring changes take effect right away.
Autosave Functionality: Changes are automatically saved to an internal file, allowing users to manage and apply updates with ease.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for developers, system administrators, and IT professionals who frequently edit host files. By providing a streamlined, user-friendly experience, WinHosts Manager helps save time, reduce errors, and improve efficiency when managing network configurations or testing environments.
Installable via winget, the application is designed with productivity in mind, offering a robust solution for those seeking to simplify their hosts file management workflow.
README
WinHosts Manager
Hosts file management for Windows machines with a GUI and productivity features.
Why this project?
Pretty much any dev has to edit the hosts file sooner or later. On Windows, this means opening the file in a text editor that was launched with elevated privileges. This is cumbersome and often means you have to do the changes twice, because you forgot to run as administrator the first time. The file path is also easy to forget if you only use it occasionally.
I tried to improve that workflow by adding a GUI, and making it easy to enable or disable the entries. More features are planned in the future.
Features
Graphical interface for easy and intuitive visual editing.
Administrator privileges obtained through UAC at launch.
Hosts can be enabled and disabled — disabled hosts won't appear in the hosts file.
Writing to hosts file means that the changes are applied immediately!
Autosave: your changes are immediately stored to an internal file, and you'll be free to apply them at will.
Planned features
Environments: single entries may have different values in different contexts.
CLI commands
Install and run
Download the latest release from the Releases page and run the setup.
Run "WinHosts Manager" from the Start Menu or from a link.
License
WinHosts Manager is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for the full text of the license.
Contributing
If you wish to help this project, consider contributing a fix, an improvement or a new feature. Please file an issue before starting to work on it, and let me know that you intend to contribute the solution yourself.
You're also invited to open an issue if you find any bug or if you have a feature request. The software is in a working state but it's still in beta, so a few known bugs are there, but let me know if you find anything anyway.
