Ads have crept into Microsoft’s popular free PC Manager app now, too

Microsoft has really fallen in love with advertisements, haven’t they? Ads have invaded all sorts of spaces over the last few years, including the Windows 11 Start menu, the Surface app, and the Copilot AI assistant, plus Microsoft is even testing a free, ad-supported version of Office. And to no one’s surprise, the ad creep continues.

Windows Latest reports that they’ve spotted ads in PC Manager, Microsoft’s popular free app that aids with regular PC maintenance tasks like boosting performance, cleaning up storage space, and freeing up memory. PC Manager is available free of charge on the Microsoft Store and works on both Windows 10 and 11 systems.

At the time of writing, the advertisements in PC Manager are for Microsoft 365, which suggests that the main purpose here is to raise awareness of (and increase revenues for) the company’s paid services.

However, Microsoft’s promotion of its own apps and services may violate EU competition laws, so in the long run it wouldn’t surprise us if these ads shifted focus away towards promotion of other companies’ products.

Further reading: How to turn off all those pesky ads in Windows