PC Care 1.0.0 - by Ashu Techline
================================

Website, updates and help: https://ashutechline.com/pc-care/

One program for a Windows PC's battery, CPU heat, network speed, performance mode
and startup apps - with an app window, a desktop card, a taskbar bar, a tray icon
and alerts.

PC Care is free. It is provided as is, without any warranty. It reads your PC
on your PC only and sends nothing anywhere. The only exception is the network
speed test, which, when you start it, downloads and uploads test data with
speed.cloudflare.com.

Requirements
------------
- Windows 10 or 11 (Windows PowerShell 5.1 is built in).
- Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
- Nothing else to install: no Flutter, no Visual Studio, no admin rights.

Install or update on a PC
-------------------------
1. Extract the zip and put the whole "PC Care" folder where it can stay, for
   example C:\Users\<you>\PC Care (see "Blocked files" below if Windows blocks it).
2. Double-click "Install PC Care.cmd" inside the folder. It creates one "PC Care"
   shortcut on the Desktop and in the Start menu and starts PC Care.
   (Running it again updates: it stops the old PC Care first.)
3. Next time, open "PC Care" from the Desktop or Start menu.

If you move the folder later, run "Install PC Care.cmd" again.
To update, download the new version, extract it over this folder and run
"Install PC Care.cmd" again; your settings are kept.

Uninstall
---------
Double-click "Uninstall PC Care.cmd" in the folder and type Y. It stops PC Care,
removes its shortcuts, puts back the Windows default processor limits if a PC
Care mode is still set, deletes its settings and history, and then the folder.

How it runs
-----------
PC Care keeps running in the tray (next to the clock) after you close its window,
so the card, the bar and the alerts keep working. Opening it again just opens a
new window. To stop everything: tray icon > Exit PC Care, or Settings > Exit.
Click the tray icon to open the window; right-click it for the menu.

The app window
--------------
- Battery: live charge, measured power draw, time left, health against the design
  capacity and against your own baseline. Click "Set baseline..." once when the
  battery is new (after one full charge) and enter the warranty end date if any.
- Heat: CPU temperature, power and speed with a 10-minute graph, the apps using the
  CPU right now, network download/upload speed, memory use, and the NVIDIA GPU.
- Mode: pick Cool (Turbo off), Balanced (Turbo capped at 1.25 x base clock) or Max
  Performance separately for "Plugged in" and "On battery". These change the
  Windows power-plan settings "Maximum processor state" and "Maximum processor
  frequency" for the current plan.
- Background: turn your startup apps and non-Microsoft scheduled tasks on/off, see
  auto-start services and the apps using the most memory. Items for "all users"
  and services need admin rights and open the matching Windows window instead.
- Settings: desktop card and taskbar bar on/off, start with Windows, alerts, and
  details about this PC (model, Windows, CPU, graphics, memory, drives, uptime).

Desktop widget and taskbar bar
------------------------------
- Desktop widget: battery %, draw and time left, CPU temperature/speed, network
  speed, RAM, the busiest apps and the mode - as one card, or as separate tiles
  you can place anywhere (Settings > Layout, or right-click > Layout).
- Pick what it shows, its size, background see-through level, dark or light style,
  "Lock position" and "Always on top" in Settings > Desktop widget.
- Ctrl + mouse wheel on a widget resizes just that one; right-click > Size too.
- Bar: a slim strip on the taskbar with your choice of network speed, CPU,
  battery and memory. It stays above other windows and hides while a full-screen
  game or video is in front. Hover it for details.
- Drag widgets anywhere, or the bar along the taskbar; they remember their spot.
- Double-click any of them to open the window; right-click for quick options.
Network speed updates every second, the rest every 3 seconds.

Gaming: FPS, GPU and the game overlay
-------------------------------------
- Heat page > Gaming: FPS of the app in front. Graphics: GPU usage, video memory,
  the apps using the GPU, and for NVIDIA cards temperature, clock, power and fan.
- Game overlay (Settings > Game overlay): a click-through strip in a corner on top
  of your game with FPS, GPU, CPU and RAM - in full-screen games only, or always.
  Works with borderless/windowed full screen; some exclusive full-screen games
  draw over every window.
- The desktop widget and taskbar bar can show GPU and FPS too.
- FPS needs a one-time Windows permission (the same one Xbox Game Bar asks for):
  click "Allow FPS counter...", answer Yes in the Windows prompt, then sign out
  of Windows and back in once. It adds your account to "Performance Log Users".
- FPS counts DirectX 9-12 games (most PC games). Vulkan/OpenGL-only games and
  browsers may show "--".

Performance modes on other PCs
------------------------------
Cool and Balanced are worked out from each PC's own CPU: Cool keeps the CPU at
its base speed, Balanced caps it at 1.25 x base speed (Mode > Balanced speed
limit lets you pick another limit). On Intel 12th gen and newer, the limits are
set for both performance and efficiency cores.

Alerts (Windows notifications)
------------------------------
- Low battery (default 20%).
- Unplug reminder when charged to 80/85/90/100% (off by default).
- CPU overheating (95 C or more for over 10 seconds).
Change them in Settings.

Notes
-----
- Some readings depend on the hardware: CPU power needs an Intel CPU, the CPU
  temperature needs a thermal sensor exposed to Windows, and GPU details need an
  NVIDIA GPU. Missing readings show as a dash.
- Tested on English Windows 11. On other Windows languages the CPU power, speed
  and temperature readings may show as a dash.
- Settings are stored per Windows user in %LOCALAPPDATA%\PCCare.

Blocked files
-------------
Files downloaded from the internet or received in chat apps are marked as
"blocked" by Windows. The installer unblocks them, but if Windows refuses to run
"Install PC Care.cmd", right-click the zip file > Properties > tick "Unblock" >
OK, then extract it again.
