HashTab, the file checksum utility: what it was, and how to check hashes without it

There is no HashTab download on this site

This page is about HashTab, the file checksum utility, and what replaced it. HashTab is discontinued. This site does not distribute it, link to it or point to copies of it, and it never will.

This site is not affiliated with Implbits Software, LLC.

If you arrived from an old forum post that said "check the hash with HashTab", the good news is that you no longer need it. The job it did is built into Windows, macOS and Linux, and the commands below give the same SHA-256 and MD5 values with nothing to install. The full Windows walkthrough with PowerShell, certutil and File Explorer covers the Windows side step by step.

Check a hash without HashTab

Pick your system, run one command, and compare the result with the value the publisher lists. If every character matches, your file is byte for byte the file they released.

Windows. Open PowerShell in the folder that holds the file and run Get-FileHash. Microsoft's Get-FileHash reference says it uses SHA256 when you leave out -Algorithm, and it also accepts SHA1, SHA384, SHA512 and MD5, among others.

Get-FileHash .\file.iso -Algorithm SHA256

From Command Prompt, certutil does the same:

certutil -hashfile file.iso SHA256

Mac. Open Terminal and use shasum with -a 256. The flag matters: the shasum documentation lists SHA-1 as the default, so plain shasum prints a 40-character SHA-1 that will never match a published SHA-256.

shasum -a 256 file.iso

For MD5, macOS has md5 file.iso. Our guide to checking a hash in macOS Terminal, plus a Finder Quick Action shows both, and how to get a right-click option back.

Linux. sha256sum is part of GNU coreutils, which the coreutils manual describes as one of the sha2 utilities alongside sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. This is a real run on Ubuntu 22.04:

sha256sum hello.txt

1ab1a2bb8502820a83881a5b66910b819121bafe336d76374637aa4ea7ba2616  hello.txt

Windows prints hashes in capital letters, while macOS and Linux print lower case. Hexadecimal is not case-sensitive, so the two forms are the same value.

Following an old guide that mentions HashTab

Forum posts, NAS install notes and modding guides from the 2010s often say things like "check the SHA-1 in HashTab before you flash". The instruction still makes sense; only the tool has changed. Here is how the usual steps translate.

"Right-click the file, Properties, File Hashes tab." Run the command for your system from the section above. On Windows, Get-FileHash prints the same SHA-256 the tab showed.

"Paste the hash into the comparison box." Let the computer compare instead of your eyes. In PowerShell, (Get-FileHash .\file.iso -Algorithm SHA256).Hash -eq 'published-value' prints True or False. On a Mac or Linux, put the published value and the file name, separated by two spaces, into a checksum file and run shasum -a 256 -c or sha256sum -c on it.

"Check the MD5 (or SHA-1) matches." If the guide only gives an MD5 or SHA-1, use the matching algorithm: Get-FileHash -Algorithm MD5, md5 on a Mac, or md5sum and sha1sum on Linux. A match still shows the file was not damaged in transit. It cannot rule out a deliberately swapped file, so look for a newer SHA-256 from the original publisher if the file matters.

"Open the .md5 file with HashTab." Checksum files are plain text. md5sum -c file.md5 checks one on Linux, and on Windows the HashCheck Shell Extension opens them from Explorer.

"Compare the Whirlpool or HAVAL value." The built-in commands do not compute these older algorithms. Ask the publisher for a SHA-256 instead.

What HashTab was

HashTab was a small utility published from this domain by Implbits Software, LLC. On Windows it ran as a shell extension: you right-clicked a file, chose Properties, and a new "File Hashes" tab showed its hash values. On the Mac it was a Finder plugin, opened from the More menu.

The appeal was that it felt like part of the operating system. There was no separate program to open, and a box on the tab let you paste a published hash and see at once whether it matched. Many people never knew the name of the developer; they knew the tab.

The May 2019 copy of the product page describes "over two dozen" hash algorithms, including MD5, SHA1, SHA2, RipeMD, HAVAL and Whirlpool. It says the tool was translated into 27 languages and downloaded from over 200 countries. It also lists support for Windows Vista and higher, 32-bit and 64-bit, and the ability to read .md5sum and other checksum files.

HashTab was free for personal use, for students and for non-profits. Using it at work needed a commercial licence, priced at USD 9.99 on the 2019 page. An earlier 2016 copy describes the Mac version as sold only through the Mac App Store, with no free option on the Mac.

What happened to it

Archived copies of this domain give a rough timeline. Dates below are the capture dates of the pages, so each event happened on or before that date.

After that the product was discontinued and the domain changed hands. This site is a separate publication. It keeps the old addresses answering so that a decade of forum links still lead somewhere useful, and it writes about HashTab only as history.

Replacements on each system

Every major system now has a hash command built in. The gap HashTab filled was the graphical tab, and a few maintained tools still fill it.

On Windows, OpenHashTab and the maintained fork of the HashCheck Shell Extension both add hashing to the file Properties window, which is the closest match to how HashTab worked. If 7-Zip is already installed, its right-click menu can compute SHA-256 too.

On a Mac there is no maintained tab-style replacement in the same mould, so the practical answer is Terminal, or a Quick Action that puts shasum on the right-click menu.

On Linux, the command line tools are standard, and GtkHash adds a Checksums tab to file properties in several desktop file managers.

HashTab alternatives compared

If you want a graphical tool, the choice depends on your system and on whether you check one file at a time or whole folders against a checksum list. We keep a side-by-side comparison of HashTab replacements with each tool's supported systems, price, algorithms and main limitation, taken from each project's own documentation. Short answers to the questions people used to send about hashes, mismatches and HashTab itself are collected on the file hash questions page.

The short version: OpenHashTab for a Windows Properties tab, HashCheck for checksum files, 7-Zip if you already have it, and the built-in commands everywhere else.

A hash check is only half of verifying a download

A matching hash proves your file equals the value you compared it with. It does not prove who published that value. If someone can edit a download page, they can change the file and the hash together.

That is why many projects also sign their checksum files. Our guide to verifying a download, including the signed checksum file walks through both steps on Windows, Mac and Linux, with ISO images as the worked example.

Algorithm choice matters too. MD5 and SHA-1, both of which HashTab displayed, still catch accidental corruption, but practical collisions exist for both. Prefer SHA-256 when the publisher offers it.

The same check for images and documents

The idea behind HashTab, a short fingerprint that changes when any byte changes, now sits at the centre of how images and documents prove where they came from. A C2PA content credential stores a SHA-256 hash of the file and signs it, so an edited picture no longer matches its own record. Our explainer on how file checksums grew into content credentials follows that line from the File Hashes tab to the provenance panel.

Sources

1. Internet Archive copy of the HashTab product page, May 2019
2. Microsoft Learn, Get-FileHash (Windows PowerShell 5.1)
3. Perl documentation, shasum
4. GNU Coreutils manual, sha2 utilities

Questions

• Is HashTab still available?+

  No. The archived product page was last captured in its usual form in October 2021, and by November 2021 it had been replaced by a redirect. This site does not distribute HashTab or point to copies of it.

• Is it safe to install an old HashTab installer from another website?+

  It is a risk we would not take. With the original publisher gone, there is no current official checksum or signature to check a copy against, and every system now has a built-in hash command that does the same job.

• Does HashTab work on Windows 11?+

  No official statement covers it. The last archived product pages list support for Windows Vista and higher, written before Windows 11 shipped, so use Get-FileHash or a maintained tool instead.

• What is the closest replacement for the File Hashes tab?+

  OpenHashTab is the closest match on Windows: its documentation describes a shell extension that calculates and checks hashes from file properties on Windows 7 or later.

• Who made HashTab?+

  Implbits Software, LLC, the company that ran this domain from at least 2011 to late 2021. This site is a separate publication and is not affiliated with Implbits Software, LLC.