On-device Windows utilities. One payment each on the Microsoft Store—no subscription. Start with ContextCleaner—take control of the Windows 11 right-click menu: see every entry, find out which app
added it, and remove what you never use, without opening Registry Editor.
Flagship
Microsoft Store
One-time purchase · Perpetual license · 100% offline
ContextCleaner — Windows 11 Right-Click Menu Control
EV Code-Signed
100% Offline
EV Code-Signed
<25MB Idle RAM
Perpetual License
Zero Telemetry
Featured on
Key takeaways
Licensing: one-time purchase on the Microsoft Store, with a perpetual fallback license. The version you buy keeps working; you are never migrated onto a recurring plan.
Data handling: core workflows run on-device. No account, no file uploads, no usage telemetry. Microsoft sees the install; Automata Labs does not.
Footprint: Rust engines, typically under 25 MB idle RAM. ContextCleaner and MonitorPilot sit under 15 MB; Taskbar Sentinel is the outlier at under 35 MB.
Start here: ContextCleaner for the Windows 11 right-click menu, MonitorPilot for external displays. Both are independent — neither requires the other.
Constraints: Windows-first (Reforge and OpticBatch also ship macOS builds), closed source, and paid. If Microsoft PowerToys already solves your problem for free, use PowerToys.
🛡️
100% Code-Signed
EV-signed binaries, so Windows SmartScreen does not warn on install.
🔒
Zero-Trust Security
Core workflows run on-device. No background telemetry.
💳
Microsoft Store Checkout
Instant install and updates. No account needed on this site.
Featured app
MonitorPilot
Take control of every monitor on your desk.
Control every external display from your tray—brightness, contrast, input, volume, and color over DDC/CI—then automate the whole desk with profiles, per-app rules, workspaces, and window management. Native Rust, under 15 MB idle RAM, 100% offline, no drivers, no account.
Brightness, contrast, input, volume, and color over standard DDC/CI — straight from the tray, no drivers.
One-click profiles and per-app automation switch your whole multi-monitor desk for you.
Native Rust, under 15 MB idle RAM, 100% offline — no account, no telemetry.
Enterprise managed deployment available. MonitorPilot is available in an enterprise managed deployment version for organizations rolling out multi-monitor fleets. Request an evaluation copy and discuss volume licensing.
One-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install
Zero-Trust Desktop Infrastructure
Enterprise-grade desktop infrastructure—without the cloud rent.
Automata Labs desktop utilities do not phone home, do not upload your files to the cloud for core workflows, and process data strictly on your machine. One infrastructure layer for teams that refuse subscription rent on basic desktop work.
Focus boundaries
TimeFence
Always-on-top session HUD so deep work stays time-boxed without tray amnesia.
Execution continuity
StayGreen
Keep Windows awake for renders and downloads—with guardrails, not global insomnia.
Reference overlay plane
PinPoint
Pin docs, browsers, and PDFs above your IDE without Alt-Tab archaeology.
Metadata sovereignty
MetaForge
Batch strip or edit EXIF and embedded leakage before files leave the device.
Local media processing
OpticBatch
Resize and convert image folders offline—no upload caps or privacy roulette.
Network visibility
Port Detective
See what is listening locally or remotely—diagnostics without cloud dashboards.
Most popular
Start with our best sellers
The apps customers reach for first — full details and a one-click Microsoft Store purchase, no digging required.
See every entry in the Windows right-click menu across all four surfaces Windows builds it from, find out which app added each one, and remove what you never use—without opening Registry Editor. A snapshot is written before every change, and undo survives restarts.
Control every external display from your tray—brightness, contrast, input, volume, and color over DDC/CI—then automate the whole desk with profiles, per-app rules, workspaces, and window management. Native Rust, under 15 MB idle RAM, 100% offline, no drivers, no account.
There is no trial to install, no account to create, and no bundle to evaluate. The
whole path is: identify the problem, read the spec, buy the one app, verify the
claim.
1
Name the problem, not the product
Start from the thing that is actually costing you time: a right-click menu that takes a beat to open, a second monitor with no brightness control, a pinned taskbar that resets after every Windows update. The catalog is organised by problem for exactly this reason.
2
Read the product page before you buy
Each page publishes the measured idle RAM for that app, its supported Windows versions, what it writes to disk, and what it never touches. Those figures are per-app, not suite-wide averages, so check the one you care about.
3
Buy once on the Microsoft Store
Checkout happens on the Store listing, which installs the EV code-signed build, handles updates, and gives you a Microsoft receipt for expensing. No Automata Labs account is created, because there is no account system.
4
Verify the offline claim yourself
Disconnect the network and use the app. Core workflows are built to complete with no connectivity, so this is a claim you can test in under a minute rather than take on trust.
What "without Registry Editor" means concretely
Windows assembles the right-click menu from several registry surfaces. The
per-file-type handlers live under keys like
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers, and each subkey is a COM class ID rather than an app name — which is why
finding the culprit by hand is slow and editing it by hand is risky.
ContextCleaner resolves each class ID back to the installed app that registered
it, writes a snapshot before every change, and keeps undo working across
restarts.
You can inspect the same keys yourself with
reg query. Nothing here is proprietary knowledge — the app is doing bookkeeping you could
do manually, without the risk of a mistyped key.
See one of them running
A 50-second capture of PinPoint holding a reference window above a working
window. It loads only when you press play.
PinPoint: pinning a reference window above active work on Windows 11Pinning a document above a working window with a hotkey, then releasing it — the always-on-top workflow described in the case study below.
Screen recording · 50 seconds · no audio
Local-first Windows utilities
Browse the full catalog.
More focused, on-device utilities—each a one-time purchase on the Microsoft Store, with the same Perpetual Fallback guarantee.
Clean, transform, and convert messy CSV files fast—entirely on your machine. Open files that break Excel, search and sort 100k+ rows instantly, fix encoding and delimiter garble, dedupe by any column, build calculated columns, then save your steps as a recipe and replay them in one click. Export to CSV, JSON, or XLSX. No cloud, no telemetry.
Find and remove duplicate files and look-alike photos on Windows 11, then reclaim gigabytes of disk space. DupeDoctor confirms every exact match with a full BLAKE3 hash, only ever deletes to the Recycle Bin, warns you before a selection would wipe every copy in a set, and runs 100% offline — no account, no telemetry, pay once.
Reveal which Windows process is locking a file or folder—right from File Explorer—with Restart Manager–grade detection, friendly process names, severity cues, and guarded “end process” workflows. 100% offline; no telemetry.
Strip GPS and device data, preview every change with Simulate Run, auto-organize photo libraries by EXIF, and batch-write copyright and IPTC keywords — locally on Windows, with a Rust engine and a one-time purchase price.
The native-Rust port toolkit for Windows. Find the process hogging a port and kill it safely — then let Port Detective Pro keep that port yours with a background watchdog, remote scans, and Docker mapping. Free core viewer; Pro unlocks the active layer.
PrismKit from Automata Labs bundles Windows productivity utilities—composable tools, local-first use, clean UI—as a one-time purchase instead of another subscription.
Prevent sleep with a documented Windows power request — no fake input, no polling loop — plus timed sessions, per-app rules, and guardrails that pause on battery, Battery Saver, and a closed lid with no display.
Back up your pinned apps and taskbar layout, then restore them in one click after a Windows update. Adds per-app system tray rules and a self-healing engine that repairs missing icons and stuck auto-hide—100% offline, no telemetry, pay once.
PowerToys is a great free suite—but when you need depth, privacy, and a tiny footprint, our native tools
deliver. Browse the
full catalog of Windows utilities
.
Comparison of Microsoft PowerToys and OS defaults versus Automata Labs native utilities
Feature
Microsoft PowerToys / OS Default
Automata Labs Utilities
System Footprint
Heavy background processes / OS bloat
Ultra-lightweight native Rust/Tauri (<15MB RAM)
Customization
Rigid, uncustomizable default system behaviors
Deep workflow guardrails, custom visual states, & persistent controls
Privacy & Security
Persistent cloud syncing and telemetry tracking
100% Offline, zero telemetry, local-first architecture
System Footprint
PowerToys / OS Default
Heavy background processes / OS bloat
Automata Labs
Ultra-lightweight native Rust/Tauri (<15MB RAM)
Customization
PowerToys / OS Default
Rigid, uncustomizable default system behaviors
Automata Labs
Deep workflow guardrails, custom visual states, & persistent controls
Privacy & Security
PowerToys / OS Default
Persistent cloud syncing and telemetry tracking
Automata Labs
100% Offline, zero telemetry, local-first architecture
Six phrases appear throughout this site and across the product pages. Here is what
each one commits us to, in plain terms.
Perpetual fallback license
You buy a version and keep the right to run that version indefinitely. If you stop paying for anything later, nothing is revoked — there is no subscription to lapse and no license server to check in with.
Zero-trust execution
The app is designed so that it never needs to be trusted with your data, because your data never leaves the device. Processing happens locally; the network is not a dependency of the core workflow.
DDC/CI
Display Data Channel Command Interface: the VESA standard that lets a computer send brightness, contrast, input-source, and volume commands to a monitor over the existing display cable. MonitorPilot uses it, which is why it needs no vendor drivers.
Shell extension
A COM component that Windows loads into Explorer to add entries to the right-click menu. Every installed app that adds a menu item registers one, and a slow or broken handler delays the whole menu. ContextCleaner is a manager for these.
EV code signing
Extended Validation code signing. The publisher identity is verified by a certificate authority before the certificate is issued, and the signing key is held in hardware. It is what stops Windows SmartScreen warning your users on install.
Telemetry
Usage data an application sends back to its developer. These apps are not architected around it: there is no analytics SDK in the desktop builds and no event stream leaving the machine during normal use.
Specifications at a glance
Suite-wide figures. Each product page publishes the measured numbers for that
specific app, which is the authoritative source when they differ.
Platform
Windows 10 and Windows 11 (Reforge and OpticBatch also ship macOS builds)
Core runtime
Native Rust, with Tauri for the interface layer
Typical idle RAM
Under 25 MB; ContextCleaner and MonitorPilot under 15 MB
Licensing
One-time purchase, perpetual fallback license
Purchase channel
Microsoft Store (EV code-signed builds, Microsoft receipt)
Account required
None — there is no Automata Labs account system
Network requirement
None for core workflows; Store handles install and updates
Usage telemetry
None in the desktop builds
Enterprise licensing
Volume and managed deployment, quoted individually
Built for people who prefer tools that stay local.
Real workflows: focus timers that stay visible, batches that never leave the disk, and renames you can rewind.
Customer review
01
PinPoint: Always On Top saves me so much time as I can organize all my report materials without having to flip between windows or tabs. I love the fact that it is straightforward and simple.
Senior Accountant · Manufacturing Company · United States · PinPoint
Reviewed About PinPoint
Customer review
02
I used to get so frustrated when my Taskbar would freeze and disappear. Taskbar Sentinel has eliminated that pain without subjecting me to another subscription.
OpticBatch and MetaForge are a lifesaver for me as a person with a passion for photography. They give me the ability to stay organized and keep personal information confidential when I post pictures online.
Quotes are shown with customer permission; names and locations appear as reviewers provided them.
Real-world examples
What does this look like in practice?
Three short case studies, each built from a customer review published further down
this page. Outcomes describe what the reviewer reported — no modelled time savings.
Reporting work that lives across four windows
Senior accountant, manufacturing company (United States)
Situation
Building a month-end report meant holding source figures in one window and the working spreadsheet in another. Every cross-check cost an Alt-Tab, and the reference window kept disappearing behind everything else.
What changed
Pinned the source documents above the working window so both stayed visible at once, instead of switching between tabs.
Reported outcome
The reviewer reported the reference materials could be organised once and left in place, removing the constant window flipping from the task.
PinPoint
A taskbar that kept resetting after updates
Independent professional, Calgary, Alberta
Situation
The Windows taskbar would freeze and its pinned layout would disappear — a recurring interruption with no obvious cause and no quick fix beyond rebuilding the pins by hand.
What changed
Ran a resident watchdog that backs up the pinned layout and restores it, repairing missing icons rather than requiring a manual rebuild.
Reported outcome
The reviewer described the problem as eliminated, and specifically noted it was solved without taking on another subscription.
Taskbar Sentinel
Publishing photos without publishing your address
Hobbyist photographer (United States)
Situation
Photos posted online carry embedded EXIF data by default, including GPS coordinates and device identifiers. Web-based strippers solve it by asking you to upload the originals first.
What changed
Batch-scrubbed metadata and resized exports locally, keeping originals on disk and out of any upload queue.
Reported outcome
The reviewer reported being able to stay organised while keeping personal information out of published images.
OpticBatch and MetaForge
Our Principles
Built on what we won't compromise.
Perpetual Fallback
Pay once. Keep it forever.
Buy an app on the Microsoft Store and it is yours—pay once, keep the version you bought for good, and never
get pushed onto a recurring subscription. Organizations can license at volume too;
see the enterprise options.
Zero-Trust Execution
No phone home. No cloud upload.
Core workflows run strictly on-device—your files are not uploaded to the cloud for everyday use, and the suite is not designed around background usage telemetry. Your data stays on your CPU.
Lightweight Engineering
Built for the workstation you already run.
Engineered for a minimal system footprint, ensuring zero interference with intensive primary workloads.
Perpetual Fallback Licensing
Pay once. Own it forever.
Own your software. Zero subscription fatigue. Permanent fallback access. Start with ContextCleaner, our flagship utility, or buy any single app with the same pay-once, own-it-forever deal.
Pay once on the Microsoft Store—no subscription
Runs on your PC—your files never go to the cloud
Microsoft Store checkout—instant install, automatic updates, easy expensing
Flagship · Microsoft Store
ContextCleaner
See every entry in the Windows 11 right-click menu, find out which app added it, and remove what you never use—without opening Registry Editor.
Microsoft Store · One-time purchase · Perpetual license · No subscription
Finds every entry across all four surfaces Windows builds the right-click menu from
Names the app, DLL, or package behind each entry—then hide or remove what you never use
Snapshot before every apply, one-click restore, and 25-step undo and redo kept on disk
Zero-trust local execution; no telemetry, no network requests at all
Buy through the Microsoft Store—instant install, automatic updates, and a Microsoft receipt for easy expensing. No account needed on our site, and no subscription on Store purchases.
For organizations
Enterprise & Volume Licensing
Equip your whole team with Automata Labs utilities — perpetual licenses, zero telemetry, 100% on-device.
Volume licensing and evaluation copies are available for organizations.
Perpetual licenses
You own the version you buy. The licence does not expire and the software does not stop working — there is no kill switch waiting on a renewal.
100% on-device, zero telemetry
Core workflows run entirely on the workstation. Nothing phones home, and your files are not uploaded to the cloud for everyday use.
EV code-signed delivery
Windows packages ship as signed binaries so SmartScreen and your installers can verify publisher identity before execution.
Buying through the Microsoft Store stays exactly as it is: one-time, per user, updates delivered by the Store.
For rollouts managed outside the Store there are three options.
Option A
Perpetual, security updates only
Own the version you deploy and manage it yourself.
Per seat, one-time
A perpetual licence for the version you purchase.
Critical security updates for the supported lifetime of that version.
No recurring fee.
Feature updates and new major versions.
A support channel beyond security advisories.
Option B
Most chosen
Perpetual + annual maintenance
Own the licence outright and stay current.
Per seat, one-time, plus 25% of licence value annually
Everything in Option A.
Feature updates and new versions while maintenance is active.
A direct support channel for your administrators.
Agreed at purchase, 12-month initial term, renewing annually with a reminder before each renewal.
If maintenance lapses, you keep running the last version you received.
Option C
Annual subscription with perpetual fallback
One predictable annual line item, with an exit that leaves you owning software.
Per seat, single annual price
All updates and support for as long as the subscription is active.
After 12 consecutive months, you earn a perpetual fallback licence for the version that was available when the subscription started.
A single annual per-seat cost, with no separate licence and maintenance lines.
Renews annually on the same terms as Option B, with the same advance reminder.
Every option leaves you owning software. Nothing switches off when an agreement ends — the worst case is that you stop receiving new versions.
Request an evaluation copy
Email [email protected] with your organization,
products of interest, approximate seat count, and any specific deployment constraints.
The offline image optimizer for people who refuse the cloud.
Tired of ad-riddled web converters, upload caps, and privacy roulette? OpticBatch is a lightweight desktop bulk image resizer power users can run without sending a single byte to the internet. Use it as a fast batch webp converter and AVIF pipeline — powered by a high-concurrency Rust engine (tokio + rayon) that saturates CPU cores for fault-tolerant, batch throughput on huge folders.
Get it fromMicrosoft One-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install
Questions
Frequently asked questions
The eight questions that come up most before a purchase, answered directly —
including the ones where the answer is a limitation.
What does "never phones home" actually mean?
It means the core workflow of each app completes with the network switched off. Files are processed by a local engine on your own CPU. Nothing is uploaded to a server for everyday use, and the apps are not built around background usage telemetry.
The honest limit: the Microsoft Store handles licensing and updates, so Microsoft can see that you installed the app. Automata Labs cannot. There is no account system here, no analytics SDK in the desktop builds, and no event stream leaving your machine during normal use. You can verify this in under a minute by disconnecting and using the app.
Is this a subscription?
No. Every app is a one-time purchase on the Microsoft Store with a perpetual fallback license. The version you buy keeps working indefinitely. You are never migrated onto a recurring plan, and no license server has to approve each launch.
One exception is worth naming. Some enterprise volume-licensing arrangements do carry a recurring fee, because they bundle managed deployment and maintenance. Those are quoted individually. Single-app Store purchases never carry a recurring charge, which is why the "no subscription" claim is stated against the Store channel specifically.
Which app should I start with?
Start with ContextCleaner if your Windows 11 right-click menu is slow or cluttered. It shows every entry across all four surfaces Windows builds the menu from, identifies which installed app added each one, and removes what you do not use. No Registry Editor required.
Start with MonitorPilot instead if you run two or more external displays. It controls brightness, contrast, input source, volume, and colour from the tray over DDC/CI, with no vendor drivers. Both are flagship apps and neither depends on the other, so there is no wrong order and no bundle to buy.
How is this different from Microsoft PowerToys?
PowerToys is free, open source, and broad. One installer covers dozens of modules, several of them experimental. Automata Labs apps are paid, closed source, and narrow: one process per job, a documented memory ceiling, and a supported release cadence.
If PowerToys already solves your problem and running the full bundle does not bother you, use PowerToys. That is the honest recommendation. The trade you are making here is money in exchange for a smaller resident footprint, per-app installs you can uninstall independently, and commercial support with someone on the other end.
What happens to my license if Automata Labs shuts down?
The version you purchased keeps working. Licensing is validated by the Microsoft Store rather than by an Automata Labs server, and no app needs to reach our infrastructure to launch or run.
That matters because the usual failure mode for paid desktop software is a license server going dark and bricking installs that were paid for years earlier. There is no such server in this architecture. Removing that failure mode is the specific thing the perpetual fallback license is for, rather than a promise about how long the company will exist.
Do these apps run on macOS?
The catalog is Windows-first. Every shipping app supports Windows 10 and Windows 11. Two of them, Reforge and OpticBatch, are also documented for macOS.
Because the Microsoft Store is the checkout channel, treat the platform line on each individual product page as the authoritative answer rather than assuming suite-wide parity. Several apps are built on a cross-platform Rust core, so more macOS builds are technically feasible. None beyond those two are released, and none should be planned around.
Can I deploy these across an organization?
Yes. Volume licensing and managed deployment are both available, and evaluation copies are provided on request. MonitorPilot additionally ships an enterprise managed-deployment build aimed at fleets of multi-monitor workstations.
Enterprise terms differ from single Store purchases in a way worth knowing up front. Three options exist: perpetual with security updates only, perpetual plus annual maintenance, and an annual per-seat subscription that still ends in a perpetual fallback license. The second and third carry recurring fees, so pricing is quoted rather than published.
How much memory and CPU do these apps use?
The headline apps sit under 25 MB idle RAM. ContextCleaner and MonitorPilot are both under 15 MB. Taskbar Sentinel is the outlier at under 35 MB, because it runs a watchdog that repairs the taskbar rather than only reading it.
Idle CPU is designed to be effectively zero, because the engines are event-driven rather than polling on a timer. StayGreen, for example, uses a documented Windows power request instead of simulating input. Each product page publishes the measured figure for that specific app, which is the number to trust when it differs from these suite-wide ranges.
Something not covered here? The support centre and the contact page both reach a
human.
Conclusion
The verdict: should you buy one of these?
Buy one of these apps if a specific, recurring Windows annoyance is costing you minutes every day and you would rather pay once than rent a fix. ContextCleaner and MonitorPilot have the widest applicability: almost everyone accumulates a cluttered right-click menu, and Windows still ships no usable brightness control for external displays.
Buy the narrower apps only when you recognise the exact problem in their description. LockGhost matters if you regularly hit "file in use" with no idea which process is holding it. DupeDoctor matters if you have a photo library with resized duplicates. If a description does not describe your week, that app is not for you.
The counterargument
On the other hand, do not buy on principle. Microsoft PowerToys is free, open source, and covers adjacent ground — Always On Top, PowerRename, Awake — and if the bundled version is good enough for your workflow, the honest recommendation is to use it. The trade you are making here is money for a smaller resident footprint, one process per job, closed-source code, and commercial support.
A good fit if
You want a specific fix, not a suite, and you want it to keep working in five years.
You work with material you are not willing to upload: client photos, exported data, internal documents.
You are tired of subscription creep on utilities that should be a one-time cost.
Not the right fit if
You need open-source code you can audit or fork. These builds are closed source.
You are on macOS or Linux for anything other than Reforge or OpticBatch.
PowerToys already covers your use case and running the full bundle does not bother you.
About this page
Written and maintained by
Automata Labs.
Every application described on this page is built and maintained by Automata Labs. Performance figures such as idle memory are measured on our own release builds, not estimated, and each product page publishes the number for that specific app.
Published
·
Reviewed
Sources
Primary documentation for the platform mechanisms described on this page. Last
verified .
The published standard behind the DDC/CI definition given in the glossary above.
Deploy Zero-Trust Desktop Infrastructure.
Start with ContextCleaner for a right-click menu you control, or MonitorPilot to run every display on
your desk. On-device, perpetual license, zero subscription fatigue.
Get it fromMicrosoftOne-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install
"OpticBatch and MetaForge are a lifesaver for me as a person with a passion for photography. They give me the ability to stay organ…"
