DeviceMonger

Windows device manager with instant search across every device attribute — not just the name.

Device Manager makes you click through a tree. DeviceMonger gives you a search box that matches against all ~70 properties of every device on the machine — hardware IDs, driver version, the service backing it, its location, its class — and filters as you type.

what it does

Search everything. Space-separated terms are ANDed. A bare term hits any property; field:value scopes to one — class:usb, hardwareids:pci. Matching properties highlight in the details pane.
Three views over one collection: grouped by class the way Device Manager does it, a flat list, and a connection tree built from each device's parent. The tree flattens automatically while a search is active.
Hidden and phantom devices. One checkbox reaches the non-present devices stock Device Manager only shows after setting an environment variable and digging through a menu. Problem devices carry their CM_PROB_* code and a plain-English explanation.
Open in Device Manager. Jumps straight to any device's Properties sheet, so anything needing elevation happens in Microsoft's own dialog rather than here.

read-only, by design

DeviceMonger does not disable, uninstall, or update anything. It reads the configuration manager and shows you what's there. Actions that change device state are handed off to the built-in Windows dialog, which is already good at them and already has the permissions.

That's a deliberate limit: a tool you reach for while something is broken shouldn't be able to make it worse.

specs

Platform	Windows 11 (Windows 10 untested)
Built with	WPF on .NET 9
Device data	CfgMgr32 — includes phantom devices, unlike WMI
Runtime deps	none — zero NuGet packages at runtime
Licence	MIT

on a typical desktop: ~400 devices enumerated in about 2.5s at startup, after which filtering the full set takes well under a millisecond

Get it

The first public build is being prepared. Source and releases will be published together, MIT licensed.

Tell me when it's out

A code-signed build will be available to supporters — the same software, signed, so Windows stops warning about it.

support

Found a bug, or a device it renders badly? Mail support@abject.app. Once the source is published, issues will move to the public tracker and this page will point there instead.

Useful things to include:

What you searched for and what you expected to match
The device's class and hardware ID, if you can see them
Your Windows version, and whether the device was present or phantom

If it's not a bug — a question, or something you'd rather not post publicly — mail support@abject.app.

this section is linked directly from inside the app, so its URL is fixed: abject.app/devicemonger#support