What's New

• Improved the visual design of the Protect page.

• Numerous improvements to the Optional Windows Features page:

  • The ListView remains scrollable while background activities are running.

  • The three Verify / Apply / Remove buttons are disabled while another activity is in progress. If one of those buttons started the activity, it stays enabled so you can cancel it while other buttons remain inactive — improving UX and preventing accidental actions.

  • The ListView is split into two sections: Recommended (features and capabilities documented in the wiki that we recommend modifying) and Others (all additional optional items).

  • The DISM component is now compatible with Arbitrary Code Guard (ACG) mitigation.

  • DISM operations — especially retrieving the list of capabilities and features — are noticeably faster.

  • Added Retrieve Recommended Only (under Retrieve All): fetches only the features/capabilities the app verifies/applies/removes; completes much faster than Retrieve All.

  • The ListView now shows the Description for every feature (and the descriptions for capabilities in the Recommended section) so you can quickly understand each item.

  • Removing an optional feature now also removes its payload from disk to free space. Reinstalling a removed feature requires downloading the files from Windows Update.

• Microsoft Defender page — new Exclusion section:

  A unified view that aggregates Microsoft Defender exclusions from multiple branches:

  1. File and folder path exclusions
  2. Process exclusions
  3. Extension exclusions
  4. Controlled Folder Access exclusions
  5. Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules exclusions

  You can retrieve, filter, sort, and search exclusions across these branches. Adding and removing exclusions is supported directly from the UI. This feature was added in response to a community feature request.

• Fixed an issue that was preventing specific type of hardware from running one of the components of the Harden System Security app.

PRs

• #891
• #888

How To Download