CTLInfo displays all trusted and untrusted certificates in Windows

CTLInfo is a free portable software program for Microsoft Windows devices that displays certificate information in Windows.

While Windows users and administrators may use the Certificate Manager to display certificates by loading certmgr.msc on a device running Windows,  it is certainly not the best tool for the job due to the way it separates certificates into different groups.

CTLInfo, the CTL stands for Certificate Trust List, is a third-party program for all versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system starting with Windows Vista that displays information about certificates in a different way.

CTLInfo Review

You can run the program directly as it is portable and does not require installation. The application displays an overview on start; the overview includes the number of certificates on the trusted and untrusted Certificate Trust List, and time & date the contents were modified. You will also find the raw file size for trusted and untrusted CTL, the sequence number, and the last update check time and & date.

Microsoft set up Windows to check for certificate updates automatically. The operating system checks for Trusted CTL updates once a week and for Untrusted CTL updates once a day.

The application displays a "force" button in the interface but it was not usable when I ran it.

A click on details in the interface lists all certificates in a handy list format.

The listing provides a useful overview of all trusted certificates. The only option that is provided is to use copy to copy the selection to the clipboard. I'd like to see options to find specific entries in the listing or export the entire list directly.

Windows admins don't need to use a third-party program to list all certificates on the system in a handy format. PowerShell provides an option to display the information. The command dir cert: -Recurse returns certificates and you may combine it with Where-Object to return only specific certificates, e.g. dir cert: -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.FriendlyName -like "*DigiCert*" }. (see this post for additional information)

Closing Words

CTLInfo is a tiny portable program for Windows that you can run to display certificate update and storage information, and list all certificates of the trusted list. The program lacks options to do anything with the data other than copy it to the clipboard at this point in time.

Advertisement