Microsoft PowerToys for Windows 10

Big Stick

Microsoft provides several tools for Windows 10 that help you work more effectively, find errors faster, and change Windows settings more easily. The two most important collections are the well-known Sysinternals tools and the brand new PowerToys collection. PowerToys dates back to the days of Windows 95 and has been reissued by Microsoft for Windows 10.

The current version of PowerToys is available as an open source project. The source code and tools are available on GitHub [1]. Installation can be done several ways by either downloading the PowerToysSetup.msi installation file [2] or with Chocolatey [3] and the choco install powertoys command. If a new version of the tools is available, you can also update it with the choco upgrade powertoys command. Existing tools will, of course, be updated. Microsoft uses a common launcher to combine PowerToys into a collection. Currently Microsoft provides three PowerToys utilities: FancyZones, Shortcut Guide, and PowerRename.

Further tools are under development, which Microsoft will gradually release, including:

Maximize to New Desktop Widget
Process Terminate
Animated GIF screen recorder

FancyZones is a window manager for positioning windows within complex layouts. Many monitor manufacturers offer such tools to allow the easy positioning of windows, especially when using large, wide-screen displays. The Shortcut Guide tool launches when you press the Windows key for more than one second (Figure 1). The tool then displays available keyboard shortcuts.

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