Download PowerToys 0.51.0

Microsoft has released version 0.51 of PowerToys. The PowerToys are a collection of small programs for power users. There were PowerToys for Windows 95 and Windows XP and since mid-2019 Microsoft has also been developing a version for Windows 10 and higher. The PowerToys currently consist of wake† Color Picker† FancyZones† File Explorer Add-ons† Image Resizer† Keyboard Manager† PowerRename† PowerToys Run† Shortcut Guide and the Video Conference Mute, which is no longer offered as experimental from version 0.49. The release notes for this release can be found below.

things to note

• We shifted our localization internal service and are working on adding automated integrations back in.

PowerToys Awake

• System tray and settings use same language for turning things on.

Color Picker

• New formats added to copy colors as a float or decimal value.
• Adjust color window now accepts lower-case HEX codes.

FancyZones

• New window switching functionality! Now users can assign multiple windows to a zone and cycle between them using the Win + PgDn/PgUp commands by default.
• Added functionality for zones to adopt system accent color and theme.
• Added visual preview of zone appearance in settings menu.
• Fixed bug where FancyZones crashes on launch.

Image Resizer

• Fixed bug where resizing images creates empty folders.
• Added option to remove non-essential metadata. Helps significantly reduce the size of files.
• Fixed bug caused by Image Resizer receiving an unexpected property type or value.

Mouse utilities

• Find My Mouse: Improved functionality to activate when user double click time configuration is set above 100ms.
• Find My Mouse: Fixed display on all virtual desktops as opposed to only the virtual desktop where it was created.
• Find My Mouse: New settings to enable a lot more customization based on your feedback.
• Minor UI tweaks for fluent icons, appearance, Ctrl usage, and utility descriptions.
• New Mouse Highlighter Power Toy! When enabled, activate mouse highlighting with Win+Shift+H by default to begin displaying visual cues on your display when either the left or right mouse buttons are clicked. There is a much more powerful tool called SysInternal ZoomIt that is very helpful as well.

PowerRename

• Improved rename performance! This is now at parity (or better) with the prior version based on multiple tests.
• Added keyboard accelerators with Enter and Ctrl+Enter to execute rename.
• UI tweaks to now add number of items selected, grid-lines for improved readability, reduced font sizes & margins, and improved window resizing.
• Fixed UI focus issues.
• Added default window width and height.
• Added PowerRename event logging for BugReportTool

PowerToys Run

• New entries added for settings plugin.
• Added support for application URI handling like mailto: and ms-settings:.
• Added DevContainer workspaces to search results of the VSCode Workspaces Plugin.
• Fixes for crashing issues.

Shortcut Guide

• Added rounded corners to keys and tooltips, and system accent colors for desktop backdrop.

Settings

• Fixed default settings window size to prevent it from opening offscreen.

Video Conference Mute

• Minor UI tweaks for icon, clear button, and overlay image selection #14248†

prototype work

• Always on top prototype of being actively worked on. Right now you hit a key combo and it enables it. We are investigating ways to highlight the window in some form as well.

Installer

• Investigated how to fully shift to WIX bootstrapper and remove custom boot strapper
• Investigated how to fully shift to HKCU vs HKLM.

Random helping out

• Spell check fix –
• Fix a URL –

Development-relevant

• Focusing on cleaning up backlog of issues and developing a method to aid in prioritizing. @Dend and @crutkas are partnering to see if we can develop one signal to see what we are calling ‘centers of gravity’†
• Our primary dev branch is now named Main.
• Adjusting plugin folder structure for PT Run #10796
• Working on shifting our release pipeline onto the same system that Windows Terminal uses.
• Improvements to environment variable usage/update process in PT Run.
• Update .NET to 3.1.20.
• Centralized process list in the BugReportTool.
• Registry handling improvement for MSI and File Explorer add-ons.