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Microsoft PowerToys
- akudlacek 1y agoFound this to keep my computer awake temporarily but there's a lot more useful stuff here, and it's available on the Microsoft store. Favorites so far: PowerToys Awake - keep a computer awake without having to manage its power & sleep settings File Locksmith - check which files are in use and by which processes PowerRename - bulk file renaming Text Extractor - copy text anywhere on screen
- prox 1y agoI love Mouse Without Borders, just setup the code between machines and your mouse goes there (and keyboard input) and even simple file sharing.
- nereye 1y agoAbout PowerToys’ Text Extractor, there’s equivalent functionality in Windows now, from [1]: It's recommended to use the Snipping Tool instead of the Text Extractor for capturing screenshots. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-ext...
- Redster 1y agoSince switching to Linux in 2023, Text Extractor is actually the thing I miss most. Text Extractor was a joy to use. While I have found equivalents for most of the PowerToys on Linux, the PowerToys did a great job and it was one of my favorite pieces of software. For any Linux users reading this, is there a Text Extractor equivalent that I'm missing? I've tried Normcap, Frog, textsnatch...
- yepitwas 1y agoOn the Mac side, can confirm how useful this is. As soon as transparent text selection in images was added to iOS and macOS, it went from that being a feature I'd never even though about, to becoming a table-stakes feature for considering a GUI platform basically "complete". It's very weird and annoying when I'm on something that doesn't have it, now. Crazy for a piece of functionality I'd never even thought to try to find a solution for, until it was simply handed to me and worked automatically.
- AnonC 1y ago> PowerToys Awake - keep a computer awake without having to manage its power & sleep settings I prefer another application called Caffeine [1], which also prevents Windows from automatically locking and keeps it such that the status on some applications doesn’t automatically change to “Away” after sometime. For some reason I couldn’t get PowerToys Awake to do this. Some Windows policies are controlled by the company I work at. But I use this only when I’m in a secure location where I’m the only person around or I remember (from muscle memory) to hit Windows L to lock the system when I step away. [1]: https://zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/ https://zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoWhy not just include in the OS?
- daveguy 1y agoThey're really good at keeping out functional bloat, not so much with ad and telemetry bloat.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoMarketing driven development, its the best programming approach.
- SirFatty 1y agoI've wondered that same thing for the last 30 years.
- d3vnull 1y agoIncluding it in the OS is a much bigger support commitment.
- orphea 1y agoYep. I, for one, am certainly glad that PowerToys are separate and they can be updated/iterated upon more often.
- justusthane 1y agoI think PowerToys are sort of a testing/QA playground. Features from PowerToys are sometimes adopted into Windows.
- hu3 1y agoThey would have to support it for 20 years or more.
- tracker1 1y ago"power" as in Power-user... A lot of power user tools aren't typically installed in consumer oriented OSes, see MacOS and Windows. Beyond this, PowerToys can take third party contributions and evolve far faster/easier than Windows official release software.
- dpoloncsak 1y agoHalf of this is just macOS. I'm here for it. I've used "DeskPins" for a while now to replicate "Always On Top". Exciting to see its now 'native' to Windows. It's not a significant program, but I'm gonna try to swap over (https://github.com/thewhitegrizzli/DeskPins https://github.com/thewhitegrizzli/DeskPins)
- stronglikedan 1y agoThere have been various apps to do this since forever, but still, none are native to Windows.
- xnx 1y agoPowerToys is one of the best things about Windows: useful, free, and regularly updated. It was great to see it come back in 2019.
- ics 1y agoIf only Microsoft could make it part of Windows by default instead of those lucky users who discover what PowerToys needing to submit their request to corporate IT and enduring either incredulity or dumb jokes about the naming. Gatekeeping as "power user features" is silly, it's 2025 and many of these features have been built-in on other operating systems for a decade or more.
- xnx 1y agoTrue, but one of the reasons that PowerToys can innovate and iterate so freely is not being tied to mainline Windows and all the enterprise and backward compatibility baggage that comes with.
- seec 1y agoThis. I would rather have them be a small independent team that can test and break things instead of having to comply to a big bureaucracy. I think they brought them back to compete with the newer macOS features. It's working and I hope they keep iterating until it is much better.
- antisthenes 1y agoDon't forget SysInternals for the more technical tasks/tools.
- xnx 1y agoSysInternals is great (though improvements to taskmgr and resmon have closed some of the gap). SysInternals is also wild in encouraging running an .exe directly from the web via Sysinternals Live.
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- cryzinger 1y agoFancyZones is a must-have if you use an ultrawide monitor! I set mine up with two zones, where one takes up about 1/3 of the screen and the other takes up about 2/3.
- jphoward 1y agoAre you me? Exact same! The problem with dual monitors is either you're sat in front of the gap, or you need to pivot. This way you get a 'normal' monitor and a portrait section to the side, much better.
- dinfinity 1y agoThe obvious solution is going triple monitor: One 32" 3840x2160 landscape and two 25" 2560x1440 portrait monitors is perfect for me.
- ffsm8 1y agoI did that too for a while, have since switched to Alienware 38" ultrawide, lgs vertical monitor on right ( LG 28MQ780-B) + MacBook pro on the left. Ultrawide is quiet useful to have - especially with coding. E.g. It's nice being able to look at 2 files and have the project tree + tool window open simultaneously.
- flutas 1y agoI have a pretty odd grid setup myself for a 55" TV monitor. Best part is holding shift and being able to snap a window to multiple zones. Let's me have a grid with tons of smaller zones that are useful for various apps when I need tiny windows and large ones when I don't.
- ddejohn 1y agoI use 12 columns so I can still do this 1/3 - 2/3 split, but other proportions as well. I tend to have a chat app on the left quarter, browser in the middle half, and a music app on the right quarter. Lots more freedom than only two zones!
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- lucasban 1y agoThe new PowerToys command palette is looking promising as well, still very worthy of the beta label but I like where it’s going
- dole 1y agoCommand Palette is the Mac/Linux style app picker that's nice and bloated and does what hitting the Windows key and Start Menu search should've done in 98SE. I've got it bound to Win+Shift+Space but it's laggy and dumb enough (doesn't learn what I'm always searching for and running??) to where I don't bother. My money's still on it eventually replacing the Windows key binding.
- linhns 1y agoIt’s the best tool in the suite and I’d say Microsoft take it out and make it a single application sooner or later.
- Leftium 1y agoI tried it, but I prefer https://keypirinha.com https://keypirinha.com I use Raycast on MacOS, a Windows version is coming: https://www.raycast.com/windows https://www.raycast.com/windows
- stronglikedan 1y agoIf only there were a power toy to make it so that I can drag a file onto an app on the Win11 task bar to open it with that app, then I could actually switch to Win11. Until then, Power Toys makes every day with Win10 a little bit better.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoThat was added to base Windows 11 3 years ago
- Iwan-Zotow 1y agoHuh?!? How? It was removed and looks like not working right now
- TiredOfLife 1y agoIt was added in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_11,_version_22H2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_11,_version_22H2 Before that update the feature was not implemented, because Windows 11 uses the taskbar written for Windows 10x
- tveyben 1y agoThe ‘proxy’ part on MacOS (which I think was a thing way back to System 9, 8 and maybe even 7) is something I have always missed in the Windows world. Also being able toneart a path in to an open/save dialog to get the path there is a thing I miss!
- 1718627440 1y agoAre you sure you can't do that? I remember putting an URL there and being surprised that it actually downloads and opens it.
- cataflam 1y agoAmazing they are still alive and kicking. Started using them with Windows 95 (different specific ones, same general concept) These and Sysinternals (bought by Microsoft around 2006) were must have when I was still using Windows. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
- linhns 1y agoI think it got revived a few years ago, so not always alive and kicking.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoYes, it was basically gone for a decade or more. There’s no shared code. Though I’m sure they may have looked at the old code for inspiration for some of the Win32 stuff.
- porridgeraisin 1y agoWow. It's been a while since I used it. It's come a long way, this is excellent. At the time I chose fluent search with everything.exe file indexing and quicklook previews (all integrated), and it was really good. If powertoys can replace all that with one tool I'll be really happy. However, everything.exe will always be the only search indexer I ever use, the thing is just orders of magnitude better than anything else. So if command palette can't interface with that, it's a deal breaker.
- WithinReason 1y agoPowerToys has and Everything plugin
- AnonC 1y agoI’ve been a user of Everything along with Keypirinha for a long time. The latter is very convenient for calculations, as a launcher, for currency conversions, and more. I even disabled Windows Search because it’s slow and not as good as Everything.
- zparky 1y agoI can't believe I've never seen this before - I was scrolling through the list of tools and almost every one of them is something I've either wished I had or went out of my way to download some software. Thanks!
- AnonC 1y agoOne annoying thing (among others) I realized after upgrading to Windows 11 recently is the ability to position the taskbar on the right or left is gone. Microsoft and its all knowing Windows 11 team decided that having the taskbar anywhere except at the bottom doesn’t work well and removed this positioning feature that has existed for decades. I doubt that PowerToys would add a feature for this, but it’d be cool if it happened.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoWindhawk has a plug-in to fix this I'm pretty sure.
- hnuser123456 1y agoFor that, use ExplorerPatcher: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher
- crims0n 1y agoAgreed. Possibly controversial opinion but in my mind, on widescreen displays, it makes good sense to have the taskbar to the left or right.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoThey didn't remove it. The new taskbar and start menu were written for Windows 10x (a sandboxed version of windows meant for dual screen devices) when that was canceled Microsoft bolted them on top of Windows 10 added arbitrary hardware restrictions and released as Windows 11
- IAmBroom 1y agoSo... they rewrote the taskbar without the feature in it, but didn't technically, exactly "remove" it, per se? That's quite a small distinction.
- 1718627440 1y agoI honestly don't get what the technical reason is. Surely no one is hardcoding pixel offsets somewhere. The rendering code likely doesn't care where it starts to render the taskbar and where the main display renders. It can obviously also be rendered without a taskbar below. The most effort is probably incorporating it into settings, but this is hopefully also not hardcoded. This all sounds like something a single employee could implement in one afternoon.
- swarnie 1y agoOSRS players - You can use this to remap your 2 and 6 keys, makes mahogany tables less painful as you reach the third hour.
- gadders 1y agoPowertoys has had some weird bugs over the years: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/410 https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/410 I can't find it now, but I think it also used to crash outlook if you put mailto: links in emails.
- z_open 1y agoI wish I could find the pull request associated with that issue.
- ulrischa 1y agoThis should be preinstalled on Windows
- 0xml 1y agoBetter if it allowed single-tool installs instead of the whole suite.
- wowczarek 1y agoAaahh, PowerToys - making Windows somewhat usable since 1996. On a related note, before I'm forced to write my own, does anyone know of a Windows tool that allows keyboard based window navigation? Not the alt-tab faff, I mean like in terminal emulators and terminal multiplexers, I want to use say win-ctrl-arrows to move focus from the current window to the adjacent or overlapping visible window to the left, right etc. Someone must have done this already...
- EsportToys 1y agoI wrote https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse a while back with the “grid mode” that moves the mouse cursor by bisecting the screen coordinate incrementally.
- wowczarek 1y agoNot exactly what I was after but still looks very useful, I'll give it a try, thanks!
- z_open 1y agoTried it and realized it was gimped compared to the Linux tools it was trying to emulate. Monopolies will always be playing catchup with basic functionalities people have done for free because they make sense.
- threeboy 1y agoInstalled this two days ago for the color picker.
- pfooti 1y agoIt is a little annoying that I had to install this in order to remap the capslock key on my laptop to a control key. That's all I use from powertoys, but I guess I'm glad it is at least feasible.
- Krustopolis 1y agoI use SharpKeys for this.
- hulitu 1y agoStill no X mouse. The new Powertoys are a parody of the old ones.
- stuaxo 1y agoI don't use windows much these days, but these are impressive and all look really useful
- eviks 1y agoIs there a single utility more powerful than some standalone alternative? Seems like none of them are very powerful despite the name (though maybe that's what the "toys" is for?)