Microsoft has released a new stable version of PowerToys. There is a ton of interesting improvements and fixes in this release. However, the Video Conference Mute Tool is postponed again. It is expected to come to the stable branch after brief testing in the experimental version 0.34. Now, let's look at the highlights in version 0.33.1.
PowerToys 0.33 includes a brand new "Welcome experience" that introduces the PowerToys app to newcomers. At the first run, the user will see a OOBE-like dialog box that briefly describes what the apps do. There will be a launch button for each app to quickly run it.
PowerToys 0.33 allows customizing modules for the PowerToys Run launcher. You can now exclude unwanted plugins from the global search results and change each module's activation phrase.Currently, PowerToys Run enables you to search for files on your computer, launch programs, open webpages, execute commands, or do mathematical calculations. If you do not need some of these features, you can turn them off.
Other changes include.
What's new in PowerToys v0.33.1 Stable
General
- Updated overview links to be language agnostic to the docs site.
- 'First time load' experience. The hope is a quick, light way to learn about basic functionality. We have some more work to do and want to also use the same framework for teaching about updates as well.
- Localization corrections
FancyZones
- Adjusted editor UX based on feedback.
- New options to change zone activation algorithm.
File Explorer
- Improved how SVG images are previewed in the preview pane
- @Aaron-Junker has created a proof of concept for using Monaco editor for previewing dev files. This will enable over 125+ file types.
PowerToys Run
- Plugin Manager now is in settings. You can directly turn on / off, include items in general search, and change the action key.
- Improved support for additional window managers by abstracting out shell process calls.
- Fix for PT Run registering the hotkey on non-supported OS versions.
~will now act as the user home directory in Folder plugin.- Service plugin has adjusted status messages
Video Conference Mute (Experimental)
- Adjust video muting to leverage DirectShow.
- Goal is to have 0.34 experimental release week of March 8th.
Settings
- When restarting as admin, the settings now will reopen. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
ARM64 Progress
- Investigation on how we'll accomplish Settings with the XAML Island and WPF app.
Finally, Microsoft has shared a roadmap for the upcoming version 0.35
PowerToys 0.35 Roadmap
- Stability and bug fixes
- FZ Editor hotkey layout swap support
- Integrating VCM in main release
- Start process for removal support for old settings system and migrating our minimum OS version to Windows 10 1903.
Download PowerToys
You can download PoweToys from GitHub.
There, you'll find both stable and pre-release versions of the app suite.
PowerToys apps
As of now, Windows 10 PowerToys include the following apps.
- [a work-in-progress] Screen Recoder - The new tool will allow the user to record an app of a screen portion, and save the recording to a file . It will include an option to create a GIF animation from what the user captured. Some other features include the ability to trim the capture, and set video/GIF quality.
- Video Conference Mute tool - an experimental tool that allows muting both audio and video on your computer with a single keystroke or click.
- ColorPicker - a simple and quick system-wide color picker that allows you to get the color value at any point of what you see on the screen.
- PowerRename - a tool that is intended to help you rename a large number of files using various naming conditions like search and replace a portion of the file name, define regular expressions, change letter case, and more. PowerRename is implemented as a shell extension for File Explorer (read plugin). It opens a dialog box with a bunch of options.
- FancyZones - FancyZones is a window manager that is designed to make it easy to arrange and snap windows into efficient layouts for your workflow, and also to restore these layouts quickly. FancyZones allows the user to define a set of window locations for a desktop that are drag targets for windows. When the user drags a window into a zone, the window is resized and repositioned to fill that zone.
- Windows key shortcut guide - The Windows key shortcut guide is a full screen overlay utility that provides a dynamic set of Windows key shortcuts that are applicable for the given desktop and currently active window. When the Windows key is held down for one second, (this time can be tuned in settings), an overlay appears on the desktop showing all available Windows key shortcuts and what action those shortcuts will take given the current state of the desktop and active window. If the Windows key continues to be held down after a shortcut is issued, the overlay will remain up and show the new state of the active window.
- Image Resizer, a Windows Shell Extension for quickly resizing images.
- File Explorer - a set of addons for File Explorer. Currently includes two Preview Pane additions to show contents of *.MD and *.SVG files.
- PowerToys Run, provides a new Run command with extra options like quick search for apps, files, and docs. It supports extensions to get features like a calculator, dictionaries, nd online search engines.
- Keyboard Manager is a tool that allows remapping any key to a different function. It can be configured in the main PowerToys dialog.
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