The Windows PowerToys date all the way back to the days of Windows 95. Those who were lucky enough to have internet access in those days could download a set of 15 little utilities that enabled them to tweak the Windows interface, customise their context menus, enhance CD-ROM features and personalise the operating system in various other ways.
Since then, the PowerToys suite has been through several iterations, with features appearing and disappearing over time; with Windows 10 it was relaunched as a set of open-source tools, distributed via GitHub and the Microsoft Store. It’s also evolved from a collection of standalone utilities into a single download with a unified front end, from which you can easily activate, deactivate and manage all the various components.
You can install the suite from the Microsoft Store by searching for “Microsoft PowerToys”. Once it’s installed, launch “PowerToys (Preview)” from the Start menu to open the main PowerToys app. Don’t worry about the “Preview” part – that’s been there for many years. At this point it’s little more than a jokey reference to the fact that the PowerToys are continually being developed.
The main PowerToys dashboard gives you an overview of enabled modules, along with a quick reminder of what each one does and a handy switch for turning individual features on and off. You can browse more deeply using the navigation list on the left, which divides the available features into various categories such as “System Tools”, “Windowing & Layouts” and so forth. You can also bring up a quick-access minidashboard at any time by clicking the PowerToys icon in the System Tray; click the “More” button here to bring up the full dashboard.
There are currently 27 PowerToys to explore, with new ones appearing from time to time. Some have a narrow focus, such as the Hosts File Editor, whose sole function is updating the “hosts” file that’s used for manually resolving IP addresses; others can help you handle a whole range of daily tasks more quickly and effectively. Here’s our pick of the top eight PowerToys that almost everyone should find useful.
1. POWERTOYS RUN
PowerToys Run is an alternative app launcher to the Windows Start menu, which looks and works similarly to the Spotlight feature on macOS. You’ll find it in the PowerToys app under System Tools. Once it’s active, you can simply press Alt and Space together to bring up the Run window in the middle of your screen, then start typing the name of whatever program you want to run.
PowerToys Run instantly starts showing results below the main Run window; key down to select one, or keep typing and just hit Return when the option you want is highlighted at the top of the list.
In fact, PowerToys Run is much more than merely an app launcher. As well as running programs, you can use it to search your files, run shell commands, visit web pages, perform maths operations and more. You’d be surprised how much more smoothly your work will flow when all of these tasks are rolled into a single dialog box – and best of all, you don’t need to reach for the mouse every time you use it.
2. PEEK
Peek emulates another long-standing feature found on the Mac – namely Quick Look. This handy feature lets you select any file in the macOS Finder, then hit Space to pop up an instant preview of images, PDFs, text documents and more. Peek works in exactly the same way – the biggest difference is the keypress, as it requires you to hit Ctrl+Space to see the contents of whatever file is currently selected in the Windows File Explorer. Peek works with a huge range of file types, including text, images, Office documents, ebook files and even audio and video media.
You can also use the cursor keys to step through a list of files while keeping the preview window open, so – for example – you can easily browse through a whole folder full of documents to find the one you want.
3. TEXT EXTRACTOR
There are plenty of OCR tools out there, but their workflows can be fiddly (and they’re certainly not all free). PowerToys Text Extractor provides an easy way to grab the text from any image visible on your screen.
Before using it, make sure that the image text you want to copy is visible and unobscured. Now press Windows+Shift+T to activate Text Extractor. You’ll see an overlay appear on your screen; you can optionally select a language from here, in order to help Text Extractor recognise the text as accurately as possible, and choose whether you want text to be formatted as a single line or as a table.
Then just click and drag over text you want to capture. The text will be automatically recognised and copied to the clipboard, from which you can paste it wherever required.
4. IMAGE RESIZER
You can resize images in Microsoft Paint – or almost any graphic-editing package – but if you just want to shrink an image down for uploading to the web or attaching to an email, that’s overkill. And if you want to resize a whole folder full of images at once, it’s downright tedious to have to load, resize and save each one in turn.
The Image Resizer PowerToy lets you resize images directly from the File Explorer context menu. To use it, select one or more image files, then right-click and select “Resize with Image Resizer” from the context menu.
In the dialog that opens, select a preset size from the dropdown menu, or enter custom dimensions as required. You’ll notice that there’s also an option to reduce pictures that are larger than the specified dimensions, while not touching ones that are smaller. This is particularly handy if you want to shrink a set of differently sized images, without compromising the quality of smaller ones by blowing them up.
5. QUICK ACCENT
If you regularly work with foreign names or terms, getting the accents right is important. Windows lacks a simple, native way of typing accented characters, but Quick Accent adds one.
Once you’ve enabled Quick Accent, you can activate it by holding down the key for any character to which you want to add an accent, and tapping the left or right cursor or the space bar. For example, if you want to type “sac à dos”, you might press and hold the “a” when you get to it, then quickly tap the left cursor. This will bring up the Quick Accent selector at the top of the screen, showing a variety of accented variants of the letter. Use the cursor keys to navigate to the one you want, then release the “a” key to add your chosen character to your document.
If you don’t see the characters you’re looking for, go into the Quick Accent settings in the main PowerToys app (you’ll find it under “Input / Output”) and select which of the 37 supported languages you’re trying to use.
If you find that Quick Accent interferes with programs that use a long key press for some other function, you can also disable it in specific applications. Click on the Excluded apps to do so, then type in the name of the application you want to exclude. Note that partial matches will also be excluded, so if you type “notepad” then Quick Accent will be disabled in both the standard Windows application plus the third-party Notepad++ app, if you have it installed.
6. KEYBOARD MANAGER
Quick Accent is fine as far as it goes, but sometimes you might want an easy way to enter other characters, such as a copyright symbol. Keyboard Manager lets you assign these characters to keys on your keyboard, or to key combinations using the Alt, Control, Shift or Windows keys. You can also create string shortcuts, so that pressing a particular key combination inserts a whole predefined passage of text.
To remap a single key on your keyboard, go to Keyboard Manager’s settings page (also located under “Input / Output”), then click “Remap a key”. In the dialog that opens, click “+ Add key remapping”, then click Select in the first column and either press the key you want to remap or select a key from the dropdown menu beneath it.
Now, using the dropdown menu in the “To send:” column, choose whether you want this key to trigger a different key or shortcut, or to insert a snippet of text.
You can also remap existing shortcuts. In our case, our keyboard doesn’t have a dedicated Print Screen button, so we’d like to assign that function to a different key combination. We can do this by selecting “Remap a shortcut” in the Shortcuts section, followed by “+ Add shortcut remapping”.
We now need to click the pencil icon and press the key combination we want to remap – in our case, we’ve chosen Windows+PgDn, because the PgDn key sits close to where you’d normally find a PrtSc button. After doing this, we click OK, and select “Print Screen” from the dropdown menu on the “To:” side of the window. You could also hit the pencil button again and press the key you want to invoke, but we can’t do that in this case as the whole point is that we don’t have that key on our keyboard.
To the right, you’ll see an option for “Target app”; the default setting is “All apps”, meaning this substitution will apply everywhere in the operating system, but if you want to confine the remapping to a single program, you can enter it here. You’ll need to use the process name, rather than its friendly name – so Microsoft Word, for example, is winword.exe, Teams is ms-teams.exe and so on. You can check the names of running processes in the Task Manager.
You can remap almost all Windows shortcuts, but not Ctrl+Alt+Delete – nor Windows+L, which locks the screen. Microsoft also warns that if you try to reassign the Windows+G shortcut, it might still open the Xbox Game Bar. If this is a problem for you, you can disable the Game Bar by opening the Windows Settings app, then clicking on Gaming, then Game Bar and turning off the switch beside “Allow your controller to open Game Bar”.
7. MOUSE UTILITIES
As computer displays get bigger (and more numerous), it can be easy to lose track of your mouse pointer. Mouse Utilities helps you quickly locate the cursor whenever you need to, by shaking your mouse, pressing Ctrl twice in quick succession, or using a custom keyboard shortcut. The screen will momentarily go dark, leaving just a light patch around the pointer to highlight its position.
That’s not all Mouse Utilities can do. If you’ve ever recorded your screen, you may have realised that a viewer can’t tell when you’re clicking the mouse button. Mouse Utilities can be set to display a coloured circle around the pointer when you click, making it easy for others to see what you’re doing. It’s a simple but valuable tool, whether you’re putting together an instructional video or capturing some on-screen action for tech support.
While Mouse Utilities is great for desktop productivity, the mouse-shake detection can sometimes trigger while you’re playing a game. If that gets in your way, go into the Mouse Utilities settings in the main PowerToys app and you’ll find an option to disable it when your computer is in game mode.
8. FANCYZONES
We’re big fans of the window-snapping features in Windows 11, which help you organise active windows to ensure the best use of your display. If you find the preset locations limiting, however, FancyZones lets you define your own, and apply preset layouts so you can always have your applications appear where you want them at the start of the working day.
To use it, hold down the Windows key and the Shift button, then press the apostrophe key to open the FancyZones Editor. You can now select from one of the existing layouts, or create one from scratch by clicking “+ Create new layout”. Give your custom layout a name, then choose between a Grid layout, in which windows nudge up against their neighbours without encroaching, or Canvas, where windows can overlap.
Click Create again, then use the drag handles to resize the suggested zones; you can also use the arrows to move a focused resizer around, or remove any you don’t want. You’ll notice that moving your mouse within an existing zone repositions a horizontal bar – this indicates where the zone will split if you click, to create panels above and below.