PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity. Inspired by the Windows 95 era PowerToys project, this reboot provides power users with utilities to squeeze more out of the Windows shell and customize it for their individual workflows.
What tools are included in PowerToys?
Microsoft keeps adding utilities to the suite, however the 21 main tools are: Always on Top, PowerToys Awake, Color Picker, FancyZones, File Explorer Add-ons, File Locksmith, Hosts File Editor, Image Resizer, Keyboard Manager, Mouse utilities, Mouse Without Borders, Peek, Paste as Plain Text, PowerRename, PowerToys Run, Quick Accent, Registry Preview, Screen Ruler, Shortcut Guide, Text Extractor, and Video Conference Mute.
What is the purpose of PowerToys?
PowerToys are smaller add-ons or utilities that can enhance and customize your Windows experience. Microsoft created PowerToys for power users looking for a bit more personalization and tweakability.
What are the two most useful tools in PowerToys?
PowerToys offers several handy tools for specific use cases, but two very popular ones are FancyZones, which lets you rearrange your window layout to run multiple apps on one screen, and PowerToys Run, which is a Spotlight-like launcher that includes quick search for apps and files in Windows.
Is Microsoft PowerToys free?
Yes, PowerToys is free and open-source.
Does PowerToys work on Windows 11?
PowerToys is compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11
Getting started
To kick the tires on the first two utilities, download the installer here. The main PowerToys service runs when Windows starts and a user logs in. When the service is running, a PowerToys icon appears in the system tray. Selecting the icon launches the PowerToys settings UI. The settings UI lets you enable and disable individual utilities and provides settings for each utility. There is also a link to the help doc for each utility. You can right click the tray icon to quit the Power Toys service.
PowerToys settings UI.Note that some PowerToys functionality requires running in an elevated process. Elevation is required to interact with and manipulate windows from processes that have a higher set of rights than the current user. This is why the PowerToys.exe requests elevation when launched.
If you find bugs or have suggestions, please open an issue in the Power Toys GitHub repo. The backlog for creating new utilities is here. You can provide feedback on the backlog to suggest new ideas or a different priority order by joining the backlog discussion in this issue.
Current PowerToy utilities
The currently available utilities include:
Crop And Lock
Crop And Lock allows you to crop a current application into a smaller window or just create a thumbnail. Focus the target window and press the shortcut to start cropping.
Mouse Without Borders
Control a set of machines using the same keyboard/mouse, share clipboard between the machines and transfer files between the machines.
Peek
A system-wide utility for Windows that allows you to preview file content without the need to open multiple applications or interrupt your workflow. It offers a seamless and quick file preview experience for various file types, including images, web pages, Markdown files, text files, and developer files.
Always on Top
Always on Top enables you to pin windows on top of all other windows with a quick key shortcut (â Win+Ctrl+T).
PowerToys Awake
PowerToys Awake is designed to keep a computer awake without having to manage its power & sleep settings. This behavior can be helpful when running time-consuming tasks, ensuring that the computer does not go to sleep or turns off its screens.
Color Picker
ColorPicker is a system-wide color picking utility activated with Win+Shift+C. Pick colors from any currently running application, the picker automatically copies the color into your clipboard in a set format. Color Picker also contains an editor that shows a history of previously picked colors, allows you to fine-tune the selected color and to copy different string representations. This code is based on Martin Chrzan’s Color Picker.
FancyZones
FancyZones is a window manager that makes it easy to create complex window layouts and quickly position windows into those layouts.
File Explorer add-ons
File Explorer add-ons enable preview pane rendering in File Explorer to display SVG icons (.svg), Markdown (.md) and PDF file previews. To enable the preview pane, select the “View” tab in File Explorer, then select “Preview Pane”.
Image Resizer
Image Resizer is a Windows Shell extension for quickly resizing images. With a simple right click from File Explorer, resize one or many images instantly. This code is based on Brice Lambson’s Image Resizer.
Keyboard Manager
Keyboard Manager allows you to customize the keyboard to be more productive by remapping keys and creating your own keyboard shortcuts. This PowerToy requires Windows 10 1903 (build 18362) or later.
Mouse utilities
Mouse utilities add functionality to enhance your mouse and cursor. With Find My Mouse, quickly locate your mouse’s position with a spotlight that focuses on your cursor. This feature is based on source code developed by Raymond Chen.
PowerRename
PowerRename enables you to perform bulk renaming, searching and replacing file names. It includes advanced features, such as using regular expressions, targeting specific file types, previewing expected results, and the ability to undo changes. This code is based on Chris Davis’s SmartRename.
PowerToys Run
PowerToys Run can help you search and launch your app instantly – just press the shortcut Alt+Space and start typing. It is open source and modular for additional plugins. Window Walker is now included as well. This PowerToy requires Windows 10 1903 (build 18362) or later.
Shortcut Guide
Windows key shortcut guide appears when a user presses â Win+Shift+/ (or as we like to think, â Win+?) and shows the available shortcuts for the current state of the desktop. You can also change this setting and press and hold â Win.
Video Conference Mute
Video Conference Mute is a quick way to globally “mute” both your microphone and camera using â Win+Shift+Q while on a conference call, regardless of the application that currently has focus. This requires Windows 10 1903 (build 18362) or later.
Languages
Currently, PowerToys is available in the following languages: Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Turkish.
Community led and developed in the open
Our goal for the PowerToys project is for it to be an extension of the Windows power user community and for it to provide the functionality these users find most valuable. Our backlog of utilities is on GitHub, and we encourage the community to provide feedback on the backlog in this issue. Each utility has its own feature backlog. You can also contribute to the Windows shortcut guide backlog and the FancyZones backlog. For new utility suggestions, please create a new issue to discuss the idea.
What’s New
Highlights
- Advanced Paste has new abilities: Image to text, and paste to file (text / png / html).
- In settings, we’ve adjusted the left navigation to group the utilities. As the number of utilities shipped with PowerToys keeps growing, we felt this was a needed adjustment. Thanks everyone for your feedback!
- Workspaces received many bug fixes, including the proper launching of many instances of the same application in the same workspace. Note, we are still actively looking at how to properly handle PWA detection.
- We’ve added a telemetry opt-in option in the Settings General tab. As it is off-by-default, we encourage users to turn it on as that helps direct our development efforts and their journeys. More information about the data we collect can be found in the PowerToys Data and Privacy documentation and what each event does.
General
- Added a setting for telemetry opt-in (off by default, however, see above for why we encourage you to opt-in!) and user controls to view data.
- Improved exception logging by adding the type of Exception and InnerException. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Advanced Paste
- Added new built-in actions: Image to text, and paste txt, png or html as a file.
Mouse Jump
- Refactored the common classes into a separate project. Thanks @mikeclayton!
- Brought back the telemetry events that were deleted across previous refactoring efforts.
Mouse Without Borders
- Refactored the Logger common classes. Thanks @mikeclayton!
New+
- Fixed the telemetry event for when the modules is enabled or disabled. (This was a hotfix for 0.85)
- Fixed bug when creating folders or files that contain Unicode characters. Thanks @cgaarden!
- Fixed bug when the name of a new folder collided with an already existing folder. Thanks @cgaarden!
- Updated the New+ icons to the fluent style.
Peek
- Folder preview enumeration of size and number of files is now more responsive and faster. Thanks @daverayment!
PowerToys Run
- Handled a culture not found error when checking for right-to-left languages.
- Fixed the WebSearch plugin results title being trimmed in the UI. Thanks @octastylos-pseudodipteros!
- The Unit Converter plugin will now show more significant digits. Thanks @PesBandi!
- Improved error handling when copying to the clipboard results in an error. Thanks @PesBandi!
Quick Accent
- Added support for the Serbian Cyrillic character set. Thanks @Sirozha1337!
Registry Preview
- Adopted the Monaco Editor as the UI text editor. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Settings
- Fixed a crash when trying to access a non-existing templates folder from the New+ page. (This was a hotfix for 0.85)
- Added a navigation tree to group utilities in the left navigation menu.
- Sorted the list of languages in the language selection combo box in the General tab. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed the state of the info bar about templates not being backed up to not close and react to the module’s enabled state in the New+ page. Thanks @htcfreek!
- Fixed a crash caused by a dangling thread.
- Clicking a notification about there being an update available should now correctly open the Settings application in the General tab.
- Fixed a UI freeze when trying to access the Diagnostic Data Viewer files. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Workspaces
- Fixed launching the incorrect workspace when launching many workspaces quickly through shortcuts. (This was a hotfix for 0.85)
- Fixed launching many instances of the same application in a workspace.
- Fixed a crash when a previously captured monitor ID no longer existed.
- Fixed an issue causing the wrong coordinates to be saved for minimized applications.
- Fixed an issue causing a crash when stress testing workspace launching.
- Fixed application launching when UAC is off and every application always runs elevated.
Documentation
- Added HackMD plugin mention to thirdPartyRunPlugins.md. Thanks @8LWXpg!
- Added SSH plugin mention to thirdPartyRunPlugins.md. Thanks @8LWXpg!
- Added the Data and Privacy documentation to the repo.
Development
- Fixed the CI precheck action to take into account the recent changes in CI actions.
- Added the new Microsoft org issue types to the issue templates. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
- Updated System.Text.Json to 8.0.5 and System.Runtime.Caching to 8.0.1 and related dependencies to the latest to address security reports. Thanks @snickler!
- Updated WinAppSDK to 1.6.1 and CsWinRT to 2.1.5. Thanks @snickler!
- Upgraded the WpfUI dependency to 3.0.5.
- Updated MessagePack to 2.5.187 and StreamJsonRpc to 2.19.27 to address security reports.
- Removed some of the hacks that are no longer needed that tried to force same dependency versions in .csproj files.
- Removed the Markdown file exclusions from the conditions that trigger a full CI test.
- CI fails again when there are XAML style errors in a PR.
- Fixed CI actions that were not failing when one of the powershell scripts they tried to run was failing.
- Fixed analyzer violations to allow fully building PowerToys on Visual Studio 17.12. Thanks @snickler!
