Hosts Switcher

Hosts Switcher is a tool that gives you the possibility to easily cycle through multiple Hosts files to quickly apply TCP/IP configurations about link mappings. It runs in the systray.

No setup required, besides .NET Framework

The application is wrapped in two files that can be copied to a preferred location on the disk or copied to a USB flash drive, in order to run Hosts Switcher on any computer.
However, you must have .NET Framework installed, since it was developed with the aid of this platform. It doesn't add new entries to your system registry or create files on the disk. It remembers your settings on exit.

Systray runtime and Hosts management

Once it starts running, the utility creates an icon in the system tray and gets sent there on close. It can only be exited from the right-click menu or primary window.
The main panel has a minimalistic design and layout, where the default Hosts file is listed. It can be opened in your default text editor to make modifications, duplicated to create a new Hosts file after editing TCP/IP properties, visited in Windows Explorer, as well as deleted.
It's possible to create as many Hosts files as you want. Any entry can be made the active Hosts with one click, while all entries can be viewed and selected from a submenu of the right-click menu in the tray icon. Log details are displayed too.

Evaluation and conclusion

Although it hasn't been updated for a long time and remained in beta development stage, the tool worked smoothly in our tests, without freezing, crashing or showing error dialogs. It used a minimal amount of CPU and RAM, therefore it didn't hamper the computer's performance.
Overall, Hosts Switcher comes equipped with practical options for managing and activating multiple Hosts files. It's free and open source.