Yeeeeeup. One of the first things install. Keyboard remap (swap caps and control), the launcher, and fancy zones or whatever. Oh and Power Rename is a MUST have
Yeeeeeup. One of the first things install.
Keyboard remap (swap caps and control), the launcher, and fancy zones or whatever.
Yeeeeup. A side note for those just learning about it, there's a couple ways to use it, but it's worth learning the basics of Regex. These days AI can help, but sites like https://regexr.com/ are...
Yeeeeup. A side note for those just learning about it, there's a couple ways to use it, but it's worth learning the basics of Regex. These days AI can help, but sites like https://regexr.com/ are still VERY helpful, as AI is shockingly bad at regex.
Being able to use 'rename' on Linux was almost a good a life improvement as proper cross-device I/O. It baffles me how bad Windows is at transferring thousands of small files to this day, even...
Being able to use 'rename' on Linux was almost a good a life improvement as proper cross-device I/O.
It baffles me how bad Windows is at transferring thousands of small files to this day, even compared to BTRFS, the goto 'slow' filesystem.
I had no idea PowerToys even existed. I asked Claude to keep my laptop awake while I went off to do something; it wrote a quick powershell script and then told me to install that and I was shocked...
I had no idea PowerToys even existed. I asked Claude to keep my laptop awake while I went off to do something; it wrote a quick powershell script and then told me to install that and I was shocked when I saw everything in there, which is why I came to share it here. Coming from the Linux world, so much of this should be installed by default...
This had been a solid necessity for over a decade for me, though that decade started before I gave up Windows in 2019. I still managed to convince an IT person to let me have Process Explorer on...
This had been a solid necessity for over a decade for me, though that decade started before I gave up Windows in 2019.
I still managed to convince an IT person to let me have Process Explorer on my work laptop >:D (not PowerToys, but akin).
Some of the ones I adored were the advanced paste (now I believe works with ctrl-alt-v in most applications), grab and move (native in i3 bwahaha), and keyboard manager (I totally forgot that was a PT thing, as I spent a decent amount of time in Germany and needed to swap between US and DE layouts).
Gonna give a huge middle finger to peek, which was incorporated into Win8 (or 7, but I never ran 7, so not sure, but was definitely carried over into 10 and now 11), and while it's been toned down, I hate it and can't turn it off.
I remap caps to control on ALL computers and have for many years. Finding this awhile back was what allowed me to use a windows machine without constantly spamming my face into the keyboard! I...
I remap caps to control on ALL computers and have for many years. Finding this awhile back was what allowed me to use a windows machine without constantly spamming my face into the keyboard! I just don’t understand why it’s not built-in, macOS makes it almost trivial.
PowerToys is an instant install on any Windows computer I have. The one that gets the most use out of me is the colour picker. Win+Shift+C and there's a little floaty thing that says what colour...
PowerToys is an instant install on any Windows computer I have.
The one that gets the most use out of me is the colour picker. Win+Shift+C and there's a little floaty thing that says what colour the pixel I'm hovering is. Scroll the scroll wheel and a popup appears with a frozen snapshot of the area around it, so you can be more accurate with the selection. Honestly that on its own gets a lot of use from me, as I use it to check spacing between elements when I want to prove that something isn't centred properly.
Text Extractor is useful too. A simple shortcut, drag a region, and now the text you selected is on the clipboard. It'd be nice if it had a sound, but at this point I trust it enough. There's a warning saying you should use the snipping tool's OCR instead, but that's a multi-step process (take screenshot, open screenshot, select button, select area) which is a lot more than using a shortcut and selecting the area.
File Locksmith is useful for exactly one situation: a mystery process has locked a file and you want it dead. Sometimes it needs to be run as admin, but there's a nice handy button to relaunch it right in the UI. Find the process, kill it, delete the file.
I use a lot of the others as well, but I wanted to highlight some of what I think are the lesser-used tools that have become an essential part of my toolkit over the time I've used PowerToys.
I like the colour picker BUT, why Windows doesn't have a universal colour picker that lets you SAVE swatches across apps, like OS X, is absolutely beyond me. Yes, I picked the colour. Can you now...
I like the colour picker BUT, why Windows doesn't have a universal colour picker that lets you SAVE swatches across apps, like OS X, is absolutely beyond me. Yes, I picked the colour. Can you now SAVE the colour so I can switch apps and quickly USE said colour?
I'm surprised PowerToys hasnt released something like Stardock Fences (or Portals for the cheap people like me.) It should be a standard feature. Love PowerToys. Having something like dmenu/alfred...
I'm surprised PowerToys hasnt released something like Stardock Fences (or Portals for the cheap people like me.) It should be a standard feature.
Love PowerToys. Having something like dmenu/alfred with hyper+d across all of my systems is handy
I knew about it for years and it certainly did help with some aspects of Windows. Didn't stop me from switching to Linux eventually. There is only so much you can do to polish a turd, certainly...
I knew about it for years and it certainly did help with some aspects of Windows. Didn't stop me from switching to Linux eventually. There is only so much you can do to polish a turd, certainly when fresh excrement is continuously added.
I definitely use a bunch of the tools as a teacher including the Mouse Highlighter and Zoomit for zoom/markup effects for screens. There are a BUNCH of tools that are awesome for teachers. You can...
I definitely use a bunch of the tools as a teacher including the Mouse Highlighter and Zoomit for zoom/markup effects for screens. There are a BUNCH of tools that are awesome for teachers.
You can get Zoomit separately but now I think it is included as standard part of the suite.
Also a bunch of useful tools for things like Registry, Hosts, and Environment Variables.
Yeeeeeup. One of the first things install.
Keyboard remap (swap caps and control), the launcher, and fancy zones or whatever.
Oh and Power Rename is a MUST have
Why am I just now learning about this. The number of times I have googled & scripted my way to achieve a similar effect is sadly more than once.
Yeeeeup. A side note for those just learning about it, there's a couple ways to use it, but it's worth learning the basics of Regex. These days AI can help, but sites like https://regexr.com/ are still VERY helpful, as AI is shockingly bad at regex.
For more specific workflows I also use Advanced Renamer. Has a bunch of different naming and regex features.
Love this app.
Being able to use 'rename' on Linux was almost a good a life improvement as proper cross-device I/O.
It baffles me how bad Windows is at transferring thousands of small files to this day, even compared to BTRFS, the goto 'slow' filesystem.
I had no idea PowerToys even existed. I asked Claude to keep my laptop awake while I went off to do something; it wrote a quick powershell script and then told me to install that and I was shocked when I saw everything in there, which is why I came to share it here. Coming from the Linux world, so much of this should be installed by default...
This had been a solid necessity for over a decade for me, though that decade started before I gave up Windows in 2019.
I still managed to convince an IT person to let me have Process Explorer on my work laptop >:D (not PowerToys, but akin).
Some of the ones I adored were the advanced paste (now I believe works with ctrl-alt-v in most applications), grab and move (native in i3 bwahaha), and keyboard manager (I totally forgot that was a PT thing, as I spent a decent amount of time in Germany and needed to swap between US and DE layouts).
Gonna give a huge middle finger to peek, which was incorporated into Win8 (or 7, but I never ran 7, so not sure, but was definitely carried over into 10 and now 11), and while it's been toned down, I hate it and can't turn it off.
I remap caps to control on ALL computers and have for many years. Finding this awhile back was what allowed me to use a windows machine without constantly spamming my face into the keyboard! I just don’t understand why it’s not built-in, macOS makes it almost trivial.
PowerToys is an instant install on any Windows computer I have.
The one that gets the most use out of me is the colour picker.
Win+Shift+Cand there's a little floaty thing that says what colour the pixel I'm hovering is. Scroll the scroll wheel and a popup appears with a frozen snapshot of the area around it, so you can be more accurate with the selection. Honestly that on its own gets a lot of use from me, as I use it to check spacing between elements when I want to prove that something isn't centred properly.Text Extractor is useful too. A simple shortcut, drag a region, and now the text you selected is on the clipboard. It'd be nice if it had a sound, but at this point I trust it enough. There's a warning saying you should use the snipping tool's OCR instead, but that's a multi-step process (take screenshot, open screenshot, select button, select area) which is a lot more than using a shortcut and selecting the area.
File Locksmith is useful for exactly one situation: a mystery process has locked a file and you want it dead. Sometimes it needs to be run as admin, but there's a nice handy button to relaunch it right in the UI. Find the process, kill it, delete the file.
I use a lot of the others as well, but I wanted to highlight some of what I think are the lesser-used tools that have become an essential part of my toolkit over the time I've used PowerToys.
I like the colour picker BUT, why Windows doesn't have a universal colour picker that lets you SAVE swatches across apps, like OS X, is absolutely beyond me. Yes, I picked the colour. Can you now SAVE the colour so I can switch apps and quickly USE said colour?
No?
Cool cool.
I'm surprised PowerToys hasnt released something like Stardock Fences (or Portals for the cheap people like me.) It should be a standard feature.
Love PowerToys. Having something like dmenu/alfred with hyper+d across all of my systems is handy
I don't understand why PowerToys aren't just included out of the box at this point.
Didn't they (MS) hire the guy that wrote (at least some of) it? proctools? IIRC. Haven't need to use any of this stuff in a long old time
I don't use it often, but it's quite handy when I do. I recently used this to turn my laptop's Copilot key back into a CTRL key.
I just learned power toys existed this year. A few months before I decided it was time to switch to Linux anyway lol.
I knew about it for years and it certainly did help with some aspects of Windows. Didn't stop me from switching to Linux eventually. There is only so much you can do to polish a turd, certainly when fresh excrement is continuously added.
I definitely use a bunch of the tools as a teacher including the Mouse Highlighter and Zoomit for zoom/markup effects for screens. There are a BUNCH of tools that are awesome for teachers.
You can get Zoomit separately but now I think it is included as standard part of the suite.
Also a bunch of useful tools for things like Registry, Hosts, and Environment Variables.