Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft PowerToys

learn.microsoft.com

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#51

FancyZones 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.

Are 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.

The obvious solution is going triple monitor:

One 32" 3840x2160 landscape and two 25" 2560x1440 portrait monitors is perfect for me.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#53
It 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are 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.

The obvious solution is going triple monitor: One 32" 3840x2160 landscape and two 25" 2560x1440 portrait monitors is perfect for me.

I 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#55

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…

I wrote https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse a while back with the “grid mode” that moves the mouse cursor by bisecting the screen coordinate incrementally.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#56
post #41
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. 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.

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#57
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…

They 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

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#59

If 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.

That was added to base Windows 11 3 years ago

Re: Microsoft PowerToys

#60
post #43

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.

Yes, 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.
Post reply on HN