Microsoft PowerToys

How to use PowerToys | Downloads & Release notes | Contributing to PowerToys | What's Happening | Roadmap

Build status

Architecture	Master	Stable	Installer
x64

About

Microsoft PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity. For more info on PowerToys overviews and how to use the utilities, or any other tools and resources for Windows development environments, head over to docs.microsoft.com!

	Current utilities:
PowerToys Awake	Color Picker	FancyZones
File Explorer Add-ons	Image Resizer	Keyboard Manager
Mouse utilities	PowerRename	PowerToys Run
Shortcut Guide	Video Conference Mute

Installing and running Microsoft PowerToys

Requirements

Windows 11 or Windows 10 v1903 (18362) or newer.
.NET Core 3.1.15 Desktop Runtime or a newer 3.1.x runtime. The installer will handle this if not present.

Via GitHub with EXE [Recommended]

Stable version

Microsoft PowerToys GitHub releases page, click on Assets at the bottom to show the files available in the release and then click on PowerToysSetup-0.49.0-x64.exe to download the PowerToys installer.

This is our preferred method.

Via Microsoft Store

Install from the Microsoft Store's PowerToys page. You must be using the new Microsoft Store which will be available for both Windows 11 and Windows 10.

Via WinGet (Preview)

Download PowerToys from WinGet. To install PowerToys, run the following command from the command line / PowerShell:

winget install Microsoft.PowerToys -s winget

Other install methods

There are community driven install methods such as Chocolatey and Scoop. If these are your preferred install solutions, this will have the install instructions.

Processor support

We currently support the matrix below.

x64	x86	ARM64
Supported	Issue #602	Issue #490

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions of all types. Help spec'ing, design, documentation, finding bugs are ways everyone can help on top of coding features / bug fixes. We are excited to work with the power user community to build a set of tools for helping you get the most out of Windows.

We ask that before you start work on a feature that you would like to contribute, please read our Contributor's Guide. We will be happy to work with you to figure out the best approach, provide guidance and mentorship throughout feature development, and help avoid any wasted or duplicate effort.

Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution.

For guidance on developing for PowerToys, please read the developer docs for a detailed breakdown. This includes how to setup your computer to compile.

What's Happening

PowerToys Roadmap

Our prioritized roadmap of features and utilities that the core team is focusing on.

0.49 - October 2021 Update

The v0.49 release cycle introduces exciting new updates primarily centered around modernizing PowerRename's UI, adding a brand new mouse utility, and merging Video Conference Mute into the stable releases!

PowerRename's new UI brings a refreshed experience that reflects the modern UI theming of Windows 11, along with helpful regular expression guidance and file formatting tips.

With the new mouse utility, PowerToys introduces functionality to quickly find your mouse position by double pressing the left ctrl key. This is ideal for large, high-resolution displays and low-vision users, with additional features and enhancements planned for future releases. Special thanks to Raymond Chen for providing the base code PowerToys used to develop this feature. To learn more, check out our Mouse Utilities documentation on Microsoft Docs!

As Video Conference Mute becomes available in the stable releases, there are still known quirks that we are actively working to address. These bugs are tracked on our GitHub, and we welcome any and all feedback as we work to isolate and resolve the cause.

Color Picker's HEX format will no longer have the # character. This addresses issues with various color inputs that only accept six characters cutting off the last value. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes as we understand it impacts users who may prefer having # included. However, we believe this is the best solution while the custom string functionality (#8305) is in development.

Additional work in this release include stability updates and optimizations, installer updates, general bug fixes, and accessibility improvements.

Highlights from v0.49

General

Change of Behavior: Color Picker's HEX format will no longer have the # character. Custom string functionality for color picker (#8305) is in development and will allow someone to use this again.
Find My Mouse utility added! Utilize the functionality to quickly locate the cursor on your displays! Learn more on our Mouse Utility docs.
Accessibility and minor UI improvements to the settings page. Thanks @niels9001!
Added deep links to the Settings menus for various utilities within their respective editors. Thanks @niels9001!
Settings improvements to improve clarity for various options. Thanks @niels9001!
Improved settings window to adjust size and position as needed when multi-monitor conditions change. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

PowerToys Awake

Screen reader improvements for accessibility.

Color Picker

Color Picker's HEX format was changed to remove the # character. Thanks @niels9001!
Accessibility improvements for screen reader and UI to distinguish colors from the border when matching. Thanks @niels9001!

FancyZones

Fixed Color Picker and OOBE windows from being snapped by FancyZones. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Fixed regression with layouts not being changed via shortcuts.
Fixed crashing issue with FancyZones editor.
Fixed zone layouts resetting after screen locking.
Accessibility improvements for screen reader in editor.

Keyboard Manager

Fixed crashing issue when the editor is opened at high zoom on 4k monitors.

PowerRename

New UI update! We hope you enjoy the modern experience and take advantage of new tool-tips to describe common regular expressions and text/file formatting. Thanks to @niels9001 for all the support on this redesign!

PowerToys Run

Windows Terminal Plugin added. Open shells through Windows Terminal via _ activation command by default. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Added environment variables to Folder plugin search. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
Fixed certain schemas that were overwritten with HTTPS. Thanks @franky920920!
Fixed issue with program plugin getting caught in infinite loops as certain file paths are recursively searched.

Video Conference Mute

VCM added to stable releases of PowerToys!

Community contributions

We'd like to directly mention certain contributors (in alphabetical order) for their continued community support this month and helping directly make PowerToys a better piece of software.

@Aaron-Junker, @davidegiacometti, @franky920920, @htcfreek, @Jay-o-Way, @martinchrzan, @niels9001, @pritudev, and @TobiasSekan

What is being planned for v0.51

For v0.51, we are planning to work on:

Initial development of Always on Top utility to allow users to persist desired windows in the foreground of their displays
We are working to heavily reduce / remove the UAC prompt over the next few releases on install. This is a big shift so it is spanning multiple releases so we can isolate issues if they do occur. Work is tracked in #10126
UI/UX investigations to adopt WinUI and improve accessibility
Stability and bug fixes
Update the PowerToys Build Pipeline to allow .NET 5 integration

PowerToys Community

The PowerToys team is extremely grateful to have the support of an amazing active community. The work you do is incredibly important. PowerToys wouldn’t be nearly what it is today without your help filing bugs, updating documentation, guiding the design, or writing features. We want to say thank you and take time to recognize your work.

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct.

Privacy Statement

The application logs basic telemetry. Our Telemetry Data page (Coming Soon) has the trends from the telemetry. Please read the Microsoft privacy statement for more information.

License

smilers/PowerToys

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