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PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#101

Post by lifthrasiir »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #96
jcrben wrote: post #67

I found that IT at work wouldn't let me install powertoys because they didn't like the Awake feature. Please bundle these in of allow us to install them one by one.

That's stupid, there's no way to avoid that. If you can't do it in software you can do it in hardware. I do it when working at home with a digispark that simulates a mouse that moves a tiny bit once in a while. You could even place the mouse on a moving surface or something. I think in the office locking a PC is very important but in a WFH situation much less so. Especially in my case where I live alone.

Agreed it's stupid, but it still remains a good idea to have a separate distribution without Awake.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#102

Post by Zardoz84 »

loeg wrote: post #52
octagons wrote: post #15

Fancy Zones makes my day-to-day so much more convenient. I wish there was an equivalent in Linux that worked as well - I’ve tried a few gnome plugins but always been disappointed.

KDE has Windows-style snap-to-halves or quarters by default. If you’re happy with those basic zones, it definitely works well. I don’t know if there’s a way to configure more complex zones.

KDE had it BEFORE Windows 8.1/10 copy it.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#103

Post by dang »

Related:

Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895031 - Sept 2019 (163 comments)

PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890828 - Sept 2019 (126 comments)

PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19845287 - May 2019 (29 comments)

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#104

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

jjeaff wrote: post #74
doomlaser wrote: post #36

This reminds me of one of my favorite features from the Mac: Quick Look — press space to instantly bring up a big contextual preview window of the selected document in the Finder. You can bring it to Windows with this useful open source tool: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook

I've noticed that in windows 11, the file explorer shows a document preview, at least for certain documents when selected.

Quick look is more than just a preview, it's really a read-only view of the document. You can read entire documents and PDFs, view HTML files rendered, pan through CSVs, etc

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#105

Post by Zardoz84 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #35
Slikey wrote: post #12

Isn't it ironic that the operating system called "Windows" offers one of the worst window management user experiences?

Out of the box windows management for MacOS is much worse than Windows, so not sure I follow? Power Toys does make Windows 10x better though... and they really should make it the default once it's fully stable. I used to prefer MacOS for development, but Windows has far surpassed it in recent years, between native linux experience in WSL and better QOL tooling via Power Toys. The removal of vertical taskbar has been…

Simply try a native Linux install. You will find far better that "our way or the highway" behavior of Windows and OSX .

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#106

Post by adam_arthur »

haswell wrote: post #99
dagw wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure? As someone who recently switched to Mac I found that the out of the box windows management on Windows was far superior to MacOS. I needed to install a whole bunch of third part tools to make MacOS usable.

I agree that window management is poor in vanilla macOS. But fixing this just involves choosing a single tool, e.g. Moom, Magnet, etc. Out of curiosity, what other tools do you use? I do find this a bit annoying, but on the other hand, it gives me some flexibility to choose the style of window management I prefer through choice of utility.

The real question is why has Apple not implemented snapping behavior after ~10 years of it being in windows? But yeah, you can achieve something similar with tooling for sure.

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#107

Post by __s »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #96
jcrben wrote: post #67

I found that IT at work wouldn't let me install powertoys because they didn't like the Awake feature. Please bundle these in of allow us to install them one by one.

That's stupid, there's no way to avoid that. If you can't do it in software you can do it in hardware. I do it when working at home with a digispark that simulates a mouse that moves a tiny bit once in a while. You could even place the mouse on a moving surface or something. I think in the office locking a PC is very important but in a WFH situation much less so. Especially in my case where I live alone.

I have a paper weight I lay on a rock to keep Ctrl pressed. Useful when running long running scripts in background while I'm working on another laptop

I've had environments where the system was pretty locked down, but had access to VBScript: https://gist.github.com/valdergallo/0e05d9e0c90b7be77458

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#108

Post by adam_arthur »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #105
adam_arthur wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the box windows management for MacOS is much worse than Windows, so not sure I follow? Power Toys does make Windows 10x better though... and they really should make it the default once it's fully stable. I used to prefer MacOS for development, but Windows has far surpassed it in recent years, between native linux experience in WSL and better QOL tooling via Power Toys. The removal of vertical taskbar has been…

Simply try a native Linux install. You will find far better that "our way or the highway" behavior of Windows and OSX .

You get "native" linux on Windows with WSL. It's a linux container, but with nice integrations out of the box re: networking etc.

I'm not against running linux alone per se, but to me being able to run both Windows (with better app support, polish), and Linux at the same time is kind of the best of both worlds. Windows feels nicer as a daily driver, and can do all dev work directly in a linux environment

Re: PowerToys – open-source Windows utilities

#110

Post by filmgirlcw »

iamkroot wrote: post #5

Wait, is this an official MS utility? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ Why aren't these just bundled by default??

As I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31305712), because it’s targeted at a different audience and because it being separate allows it to be iterated and experimented with more quickly. When you have an install-base as large as Windows, you have to be careful with what you include as a built-in feature versus what is an add-on or option (even first party), because a change made for one class of users could be confusing or detrimental to another. This is particularly true when it comes to utilities and features that are iterated on in public and with great frequency. PowerToys occasionally ships with bugs or crashes that are completely acceptable and manageable to the audience of power users (and are usually fixed very quickly), but that could be much more of a problem if shipped to 1 billion users (and the steps you’d need to take to test against edge cases would slow down development, and the development speed is one of the best parts of PowerToys).

You can install it through the Microsoft Store, WinGet, Choclatey, Scoop or directly from GitHub. It would be nice if there was maybe a pointer to it inside the OS to alert some users of its existence, but the premise was similar to the OG PowerToys, which were downloadable off of the Microsoft website.

As I said in the linked comment, stuff from PowerToys does get upstreamed into the Windows shell, sometimes with modifications or refinements, but some of the utilities are things that wouldn’t necessarily make sense to be included by default.

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