The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

> Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today. What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools

Year 2019? Oh no, not by a longshot. I've been using Microsoft-branded PowerToys since Windows XP, around the year 2001. Wikipedia says:

> PowerToys are available for Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 10, and Windows 11 (and explicitly not compatible with Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 8.1).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys

Re: The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

#6

Post by neonstatic » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

I will just note, that about two weeks ago I was trying to shrink my Parallels Windows 11 VM disk size only to discover, that PowerToys update files were stored on the drive indefinitely, accumulating over 10 gb of disk space.

Re: The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

#7

Post by neonstatic » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

whycome wrote: post #3

Weird, just today I saw that the powertoys directory is taking up 17gb on my computer. It’s filled with multiple installer versions I guess.

Ahh, just posted about the same issue. Should have read the comments more carefully. Toys indeed.

Re: The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

#8

Post by GaProgMan » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:40 AM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #5

> Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today. What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools Year 2019? Oh no, not by a longshot. I've been using Microsoft-branded PowerToys since Windows XP, around the year 2001. Wikipedia says: > PowerToys are available for Windows 95, Windows XP, Windo…

A journalist writing about something technology relayed abd getting their facts wrong? The devil, you say?

Re: The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

#9

Post by chid » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:42 AM UTC

whycome wrote: post #3

Weird, just today I saw that the powertoys directory is taking up 17gb on my computer. It’s filled with multiple installer versions I guess.

that is wild - it seems like just a 'toy' project for them

Re: The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft's last great Windows app

#10

Post by riccardik » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 8:35 AM UTC

chid wrote: post #9

whycome wrote: post #3

Weird, just today I saw that the powertoys directory is taking up 17gb on my computer. It’s filled with multiple installer versions I guess.

that is wild - it seems like just a 'toy' project for them

you're talking about windows/office/teams, right? :) seems that quality code in those times is very hard to find...