FileLens

Right click any file on Windows. Get instant analysis: hashes, strings, hex, PE internals, metadata. All in a compact popup that disappears when you click away.

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Download

Download FileLens for Windows

Unzip and run filelens.exe --register. No installer, no admin rights, nothing else needed.

Requires Windows 10 or 11.

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How it works

1. Run filelens.exe once. It registers itself in your right-click menu
2. Right-click any file in Explorer -> Inspect with FileLens
3. A dark popup appears at your cursor with tabs for everything you need
4. Click away and it's gone

That's it. No window management, no app to keep open.

To keep it open: click the pin button (small square next to the X). Pinned windows stay until you close them manually.

To remove from right-click menu: filelens.exe --unregister

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What it shows

Info — size, timestamps, entropy score, magic bytes, type detection, extension mismatch warnings. For PE files: architecture, subsystem, imports/exports count, signing status, compile timestamp.

Hashes — MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 computed in parallel. Full width selectable fields, copy buttons.

Strings — every printable ASCII and UTF-16 string in the file. Filter by length, search live, sort by offset/length/category/alphabetical. Category pills color-code URLs, file paths, registry keys, IPs, and emails. Dedup toggle collapses repeats with count badges.

PE — section table with per-section entropy and flags, imports grouped by DLL with function names, exports list. Only appears for EXE/DLL files.

Hex — first 64KB as a hex dump. Click any byte for details. Zero bytes dimmed, ASCII sidebar.

Meta — PDF properties, Office doc metadata (DOCX/XLSX/PPTX), JPEG EXIF, PNG chunk data. Only appears for supported formats.

Tabs are smart — you only see what's relevant to the file you're inspecting.

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Build from source

# Requires Rust stable + MSVC build tools
cargo build --release

Output: target/release/filelens.exe

Optional: place an icon at assets/filelens.ico and it gets embedded into the exe automatically.

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Adding a new tab

1. Create src/analysis/yourtab.rs implementing the AnalysisTab trait
2. Accept Arc<AtomicBool> cancel flag in your constructor
3. Add pub mod yourtab; to src/analysis/mod.rs
4. Add Box::new(yourtab::YourTab::new(cancel.clone())) to create_tabs_for() in mod.rs
5. Optionally override relevant_for(&self, path) -> bool to conditionally show the tab

The AnalysisTab trait

pub trait AnalysisTab: Send {
    fn name(&self) -> &str;                                    // Tab label
    fn run(&mut self, path: &Path);                            // Start background work
    fn ui(&mut self, ui: &mut egui::Ui, ctx: &egui::Context); // Draw tab contents
    fn is_loading(&self) -> bool;                              // Show spinner in tab bar
    fn relevant_for(&self, _path: &Path) -> bool { true }     // Show/hide tab per file
}

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Support

FileLens is free and open source. If it's been useful, a tip is always appreciated but never expected.

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License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.