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Microsoft PowerToys

learn.microsoft.com

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41–50 of 76 posts

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#41

Post by xnx »

ics wrote: post #37
xnx wrote: post #8

PowerToys is one of the best things about Windows: useful, free, and regularly updated. It was great to see it come back in 2019.

If 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.

True, 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#42

Post by linhns »

lucasban wrote: post #15

The new PowerToys command palette is looking promising as well, still very worthy of the beta label but I like where it’s going

It’s the best tool in the suite and I’d say Microsoft take it out and make it a single application sooner or later.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#43

Post by linhns »

cataflam wrote: post #19

Amazing 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/

I think it got revived a few years ago, so not always alive and kicking.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#44

Post by crims0n »

AnonC wrote: post #25

One 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 i…

Agreed. Possibly controversial opinion but in my mind, on widescreen displays, it makes good sense to have the taskbar to the left or right.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#45

Post by wowczarek »

Aaahh, 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...

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#47

Post by z_open »

Tried 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#48

Post by xnx »

antisthenes wrote: post #46
xnx wrote: post #8

PowerToys is one of the best things about Windows: useful, free, and regularly updated. It was great to see it come back in 2019.

Don't forget SysInternals for the more technical tasks/tools.

SysInternals 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#50

Post by tracker1 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #3

Why not just include in the OS?

"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.

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