Unfortunately, BOINC Manager is extremely outdated in terms of it's feature set and ease of use. It's very confusing and sometimes tricky to manage, I can't set the exact amount of CPU threads to use, I can't set the GPU to use (I have multiple) and I can't set the maximum GPU load, nor can I set the API to prefer.

Are there any plans to modernize the manager?

While you want more features, there are those that complain that there are too many and it's too confusing already.

All of those functions are done through the use of configuration files (except for the number of CPU threads to use- that can already be done through the manager or the web based computing preferences).
A GUI addon for making/editing app_config and app_info files would certainly be of use, but for God's sake don't add it to the existing manager.
Don't screw around with something that isn't broken.


The whole point of BOINC is to make it as easy to use as possible; for those that are comfortable with having more control, they can use the Advanced view.
Adding even more options to the Advanced view would make it unwieldy at the very least, or an absolute abomination like MS word and Excel, with every possible option anyone could ever want, but no way to easily find them.

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Grant
Darwin NT.

Adding even more options to the Advanced view would make it unwieldy at the very least, or an absolute abomination like MS word and Excel, with every possible option anyone could ever want, but no way to easily find them.

I can see both sides of the argument. If starting from scratch I would have gone for a integer value rather than percentage for no of CPUs to use. I certainly wouldn't want it to end up like The GIMP where there are lots of options and things to do that I don't understand which make finding the things I do want hard work.

In reply to Dave's message of 13 Jul 2026:

If starting from scratch I would have gone for a integer value rather than percentage for no of CPUs to use.

When BOINC started, CPU cores numbered in the singles, maybe low plurals. We'd just come off the Seti client, which did everything on a single core.

The client at the time, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 did use an integer for the CPU count. It was when CPUs came out that had multiple cores or doubled in amount by hyper-threading, that people wanted more control, and the percentages were introduced. To the option of running on partial CPU cores.

Remember that BOINC development started in 2002. You'd be shocked by how the client & manager looked like at that time, all one program, very few options, everything set via the website only. With BOINC 6 a complete rewrite of the client took place, and the client and manager separated, the service-install became available, etc. etc. There is a lot of history.

Thanks for the context Jord. I guess I am saying if starting from scratch with current hardware rather than if I was in control back in 2002. It wasn't long after that I started with CPDN though with an email now lost in the mists of time so not my current account with them. At that time, I always used the default settings.

For giggles, I unpacked 5.4.7 with the /a commandline option, and checked what's inside that Manager.
You can do so too... https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.4.7_windows_intelx86.exe, and then compare that to present day BOINC Manager. And maybe think you don't have it so bad. 😂

In reply to Seacat17's message of 13 Jul 2026:

I can't set the exact amount of CPU threads to use

Yes, this is the design we currently have. Since this is something that we have for quite a long period of time, we will not change it.
Also, the number of threads is quite easy to calculate, and this is not the parameter that is supposed to be changed very often.
So one time calculation is ok, so this is not the fuctionality we are gonna change.

I can't set the GPU to use (I have multiple)

Could you please be more specific here?
By default, we detect all the GPUs, but we allow only the most pwerful to be used.
If the user would like to use all GPUs, this needs to be enabled via cc_config.xml file.
If the user would like to use only specific GPUs, this is also possible to be via the configuration file.
However, we try to make this functionality as simple as possible.
And we don't want to confuse unexperienced people with big number of options (on GitHub we recently received a complain, that sometimes people are scaried away by the word they don't know).

and I can't set the maximum GPU load

This is the functionality we don't have in the client, and that we are not going to add, because this is too complicated and is never reliable.

nor can I set the API to prefer.

Could you please specify what exactly do you mean here?

Are there any plans to modernize the manager?

This is something that we do on a daily basis, but the 'modernization' itself is understood by the different people in a different way, and while some may find in the recent versions some useful features for them, others might not see the difference at all if they don't use some particular functionality of the software.

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BOINC maintainer.
For any insight, check my BOINC Development Blog.

You should take a look at the Folding at Home client before you call setting a set # of CPUs//GPUs simple in BOINC. The slot method is by far better/simpler and I wish that method was available when I want to mix projects on a single PC. Setting a specific # of CPUs with a PC with over 128 threads is impossible with the client alone as 1% can be 1 or 2 CPUs in some cases.