Utility software is software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. It is used to support the computer

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

- in contrast to

application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

, which is aimed at directly performing tasks that benefit ordinary users. However, utilities often form part of the application . For example, a

batch job Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...

may run user-written code to update a database and may then include a step that runs a utility to back up the database, or a job may run a utility to compress a disk before copying files. Although a basic set of utility programs is usually distributed with an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

(OS), and this first party utility software is often considered part of the operating system, users often install replacements or additional utilities. Those utilities may provide additional facilities to carry out tasks that are beyond the capabilities of the operating system. Many utilities that might affect the entire computer system require the user to have elevated privileges, while others that operate only on the user's data do not.

System utilities

Anti-virus Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name. ...

utilities scan for computer viruses and block or remove them. *

Clipboard manager A clipboard manager is a computer program that adds functionality to an operating system's clipboard. Many clipboards provide only one buffer for the "copy and paste" function, and it is overwritten by each new "copy" operation. The main task of a ...

s expand the

clipboard A clipboard is a thin, rigid board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available. Th ...

functionality of an operating system. *

Computer access control In computer security, general access control includes identification, authorization, authentication, access approval, and audit. A more narrow definition of access control would cover only access approval, whereby the system makes a decision to g ...

software grants or denies requests for access to system resources. *

Debugger A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to software testing, test and debugging, debug other programs (the "target" program). The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled conditions that permit the pr ...

s typically permit the examination and modification of data and program instructions in memory and on disk. *

Diagnostic program A diagnostic program (also known as a Test Mode) is an automatic computer program sequence that determines the operational status within the software, hardware, or any combination thereof in a component, a system, or a network of systems. Diagno ...

s determine and report the operational status of computer hardware and software.

Memory tester Memory testers are specialized test equipment used to test and verify memory modules. Types Memory module testers can be broadly categorized into two types, hardware memory testers and software diagnostic programs that run in a PC environme ...

s are one example. * Network utilities analyze the computer's network connectivity, configure network settings, check data transfer or log events. *

Package manager A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

s are used to configure, install or keep up to date other software on a computer. *

Registry cleaner A registry cleaner is a class of third-party utility software designed for the Microsoft Windows operating system, whose purpose is to remove redundant items from the Windows Registry. Registry cleaners are not supported by Microsoft, but vendors ...

s clean and optimize the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and use ...

by removing old registry keys that are no longer in use. *

System monitor A system monitor is a Computer hardware, hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. ...

s monitor resources and performance in a computer system. * System profilers provide detailed information about installed software and hardware.

Storage device management utilities

Backup software Backup software are computer programs used to perform a backup; they create supplementary exact copies of files, databases or entire computers. These programs may later use the supplementary copies to restore the original contents in the event of d ...

makes copies of all information stored on a disk and restores either the entire disk (aka

Disk cloning Disk cloning is the process of creating a 1-to-1 copy of a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD), not just its files. Disk cloning may be used for upgrading a disk or replacing an aging disk with a fresh one. In this case, the clone can r ...

) in an event of disk failure or selected files that are accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Undeletion Undeletion is a feature for restoring computer files which have been removed from a file system by file deletion. Deleted data can be recovered on many file systems, but not all file systems provide an undeletion feature. Recovering data witho ...

utilities are sometimes more convenient. *

Disk checker A disk utility is a utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters and other mount p ...

s scan an operating hard drive and check for logical (filesystem) or physical errors. *

Disk compression A disk compression software utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size. Unlike a file compression utility, which compresses only specified files—and which requires the user to designate ...

utilities transparently

compress compress is a Unix shell compression program based on the LZW compression algorithm. Compared to more modern compression utilities such as gzip and bzip2, compress performs faster and with less memory usage, at the cost of a significantly l ...

/uncompress the contents of a disk, increasing the capacity of the disk. *

Disk defragmenter Disk or disc may refer to: * Disk (mathematics), a geometric shape * Disk storage Music * Disc (band), an American experimental music band * ''Disk'' (album), a 1995 EP by Moby Other uses * Disk (functional analysis), a subset of a vector sp ...

s detect

computer file A computer file is a computer resource for recording data in a computer storage device, primarily identified by its file name. Just as words can be written to paper, so can data be written to a computer file. Files can be shared with and transfe ...

s whose contents are scattered across several locations on the

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

and collect the fragments into one contiguous area. * Disk formatters prepare a data storage device such as a hard disk, solid-state drive, floppy disk or USB flash drive for initial use. These are often used to permanently erase an entire device. * Disk partition editors divide an individual drive into multiple logical drives, each with its own file system which can be mounted by the operating system and treated as an individual drive. *

Disk space analyzer A disk utility is a utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters and other mount po ...

s provide a visualization of disk space usage by getting the size for each folder (including sub folders) and files in folder or drive. showing the distribution of the used space. * Tape initializers write a

label A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product, on which is written or printed information or symbols about the product or item. Information printed dir ...

to a

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

or other magnetic medium. Initializers for

DECtape DECtape, originally called Microtape, is a magnetic tape data storage medium used with many Digital Equipment Corporation computers, including the PDP-6, PDP-8, LINC-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-12, and the PDP-15. On DEC's 32-bit systems, VA ...

formatted the tape into blocks.

File management utilities

* Archivers output a stream or a single file when provided with a directory or a set of files. Archive ''suites'' may include compression and encryption capabilities. Some archive utilities have a separate un-archive utility for the reverse operation. One nearly universal type of archive file format is the

zip file ZIP is an archive file format that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is th ...

. *

Cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...

utilities encrypt and decrypt streams and files. *

Data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

utilities output a shorter stream or a smaller file when provided with a stream or file. *

Data conversion Data conversion is the conversion of computer data from one format to another. Throughout a computer environment, data is encoded in a variety of ways. For example, computer hardware is built on the basis of certain standards, which requires tha ...

utilities transform data from a source file to some other format, such as from a text file to a

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

document. *

Data recovery In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The dat ...

utilities are used to rescue good data from corrupted files. *

Data synchronization Data synchronization is the process of establishing consistency between source and target data stores, and the continuous harmonization of the data over time. It is fundamental to a wide variety of applications, including file synchronization and m ...

utilities establish consistency among data from a source to a target data storage and vice versa. There are several branches of this type of utility: **

File synchronization File synchronization (or syncing) in computing is the process of ensuring that computer files in two or more locations are updated via certain rules. In ''one-way file synchronization'', also called mirroring, updated files are copied from a sour ...

utilities maintain consistency between two sources. They may be used to create redundancy or backup copies but are also used to help users carry their digital music, photos and video in their

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

s. **

Revision control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

utilities can recreate a coherent structure where multiple users simultaneously modify the same file. *

Disk cleaner A disk utility is a utility software, utility program that allows a user to perform various functions on a computer disk, such as disk partitioning and logical volume management, as well as multiple smaller tasks such as changing drive letters an ...

s find files that are unnecessary to computer operation, or take up considerable amounts of space. *

File comparison In computing, file comparison is the calculation and display of the differences and similarities between data objects, typically text files such as source code. The methods, implementations, and results are typically called a diff, after the Un ...

utilities provide a standalone capability to detect differences between files. *

File manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

s provide a convenient method of performing routine data management, email recovery and management tasks, such as deleting, renaming, cataloging, uncataloging, moving, copying, merging, setting write protection status, setting file access permissions, generating and modifying folders and data sets.

Miscellaneous utilities

* Data generators (e.g. IEBDG) create a file of test data according to specified patterns. *

Hex editor A hex editor (or ''binary file editor'' or ''byte editor'') is a computer program that allows for manipulation of the fundamental binary data that constitutes a computer file. The name 'hex' comes from ' hexadecimal', a standard numerical format f ...

s directly modify the text or data of a file without regard to file format. These files can be data or programs. * HTML checkers validate

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

code and check links. *

Installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

or setup utilities are used to initialize or configure programs, usually applications programs, for use in a specific computer environment. There are also

Uninstaller An uninstaller, also called a deinstaller, is a variety of utility software designed to remove other software or parts of it from a computer. It is the opposite of an installer. Uninstallers are useful primarily when software components are install ...

s. *

Patching Patching is a small village and civil parish that lies amid the fields and woods of the southern slopes of the South Downs in the National Park in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. It has a visible hill-workings history going back t ...

utilities perform alterations of files, especially object programs when program source is unavailable. *

Screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor ...

s prevent

phosphor burn-in Screen burn-in, image burn-in, or ghost image, is a permanent discoloration of areas on an electronic display such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) in an old computer monitor or television set. It is caused by cumulative non-uniform use of the sc ...

on CRT and plasma

computer monitor A computer monitor is an output device that displays information in pictorial or textual form. A discrete monitor comprises a visual display, support electronics, power supply, housing, electrical connectors, and external user controls. The di ...

s. * Sort/Merge programs arrange records (lines) of a file into a specified sequence. * Standalone macro recorders permit use of keyboard macros in programs that do not natively support such a feature.

References

{{Authority control

System utilities

Storage device management utilities

File management utilities

Miscellaneous utilities

See also

References