-
Posts
-
-
By Steven P. · Posted
Agreed, but now my muscle memory immediately creates a layer for each text portion, so editing is made a little easier. -
By Steven P. · Posted
Happy for him, it is one of the first apps I install on a new Windows machine, been using it for years! -
By Orrelix Organimus · Posted
I still don't think it's as simple as that. Should Amazon drop "Cloud" from their product/service branding? That's a platform too? -
By hellowalkman · Posted
Microsoft explains why PowerToys 0.100.0 is faster and slimmer, there are new features too by Sayan Sen Microsoft has released PowerToys version 0.100.0 today, bringing a sizeable collection of upgrades across the utility suite. While the release contains fixes and improvements for multiple modules, the biggest highlights revolve around performance, reduced package size, Command Palette enhancements, a redesigned Shortcut Guide experience, and further refinements to the recently introduced Power Display utility. For anyone not familiar or who does not read Neowin regularly, Microsoft PowerToys is a free, open-source set of utilities for Windows 10 and 11 that are designed to help with customization that can also in turn boost your productivity. It offers tools such as FancyZones for window layouts, PowerToys Run for quick app launching, Color Picker, PowerRename, and more. The app is primarily meant for power users on Windows, and hence the name. One of the most notable changes in PowerToys 0.100.0 is its migration to .NET 10. Besides modernizing the codebase, the move greatly reduces the application's overall footprint and also claims to improve startup times and general responsiveness. For users who keep PowerToys running continuously in the background, this could mean a smoother experience and lower resource usage over time. It is no fluke for sure as is evident from the download size. While the previous release 0.99.1 was 376MB, the latest release is substantially smaller at just 272MB. That's a 28% drop. Microsoft is also continuing its development of Command Palette as the launcher receives another round of upgrades including a new utility called Extension Gallery. As the name suggests, it lets users browse through and also install various extensions without leaving the Command Palette. It is available within the Command Palette settings. Speaking of new utilities, a newly revamped Shortcut Guide experience has been added. It basically displays available Windows key shortcuts on demand and has been redesigned to make discovering and learning keyboard shortcuts easier. Given that Shortcut Guide was one of the earlier PowerToys features in its open-source era, the refresh brings it more in line with the modern design language Microsoft has been introducing throughout the project. Power Display, the monitor-management utility introduced recently, also receives meaningful improvements. The tool allows users to control supported monitor settings such as brightness, contrast, volume, and color profiles directly from the system tray without reaching for physical monitor buttons. Several existing modules have received smaller but useful improvements as well. Microsoft has continued refining FancyZones, File Locksmith, Advanced Paste, Image Resizer, Mouse utilities, and other components. As usual, the release includes a long list of bug fixes aimed at improving stability, reducing crashes, and addressing user-reported issues across the suite. The full changelog is given below: Advanced Paste Fixed Advanced Paste clipboard-to-JSON conversion so clipboard read failures return an empty result instead of surfacing an exception in #48124 Command Palette Extension Gallery & Extensions Added the Command Palette Extension Gallery so users can discover, browse, install, update, and uninstall community extensions from within Command Palette, with cached gallery data, extension details/screenshots, and WinGet status/progress integration Added Command Palette parameter pages so extensions can prompt for lightweight command inputs directly in the search experience, including sample pages and SDK support for parameter runs Updated Command Palette bookmarks to collect placeholder values as inline parameters, so bookmarked commands can be filled in directly instead of opening a separate placeholders page Improved Command Palette Extension Gallery link handling so only HTTP/HTTPS homepage, author, install, and metadata links are shown or opened from the gallery UI Fixed Command Palette Extension Gallery UI bindings so WinGet operation indicators continue to update correctly without build warnings Fixed an AOT-only Command Palette Extension Gallery crash when opening an extension page with screenshots Updated the Command Palette extension template to use the 0.11 SDK package Improved Command Palette accessibility so Narrator announces checkbox labels on the Installed Apps page in Extensions settings in Dock Added Command Palette Dock support for customizing dock bands separately per monitor, allowing multi-monitor setups to keep independent dock layouts Added Command Palette Dock edit mode support for dragging dock bands between monitors, so pinned commands can move across per-monitor dock layouts Added Command Palette Dock drag-and-drop bookmarking for files and URLs, immediately creating and pinning bookmarks, improving pinned folder bookmarks so they open the Command Palette browse experience Fixed Command Palette dock context menu commands so Page commands and confirmation dialogs open the palette at the dock item when invoked from a dock item menu Fixed Command Palette Dock band tooltips so they refresh when the item title or subtitle changes Fixed Command Palette dock startup animations so items pinned to the End section animate consistently with Start and Center items Fixed Command Palette dock subtitle visibility in compact mode so subtitles refresh correctly after async updates Fixed Command Palette hotkey navigation when the palette is showing a transient dock page Fixed a Command Palette dock window border that occasionally remained visible after disconnect/reconnect, by ensuring the owner HWND is set before frame removal Improved the Command Palette Pin to Dock dialog by reordering controls so they appear above the preview, making the dialog easier to scan Performance Monitor Added a Battery widget to Command Palette Performance Monitor that shows live charge percentage, charging/AC status, and estimated time remaining, updating the dock-band battery icon to reflect current charge level and charging state in Added Command Palette Performance Monitor dock bands for individual metrics like CPU, memory, network, GPU, and battery when available Fixed Command Palette Performance Monitor's CPU dock reading to use a 0–100% system CPU counter, preventing boosted CPUs from showing values above 100% Improved Command Palette Performance Monitor network widgets by giving Send and Receive distinct up/down arrow icons and simplifying their labels Reordered Command Palette Performance Monitor network dock bands to match Task Manager's send/receive order Fixed a Command Palette Performance Monitor crash when a GPU index falls outside the available range Fixed a Command Palette Performance Monitor settings file path collision that could cause widget settings to overwrite one another Calculator Added rand() and randi() to the Command Palette Calculator and improved error messages by distinguishing invalid expressions, NaN, and out-of-range results Fixed Command Palette Calculator parsing for multi-argument functions in cultures where comma is both thousands separator and argument separator, so expressions like max(1,2) and grouped numbers are handled correctly Fixed the Command Palette and Run Calculator 'log' and 'ln' functions when whitespace separates the function name from its argument, so 'log (n)' computes log base 10 and 'ln (n)' no longer errors out Reliability & UX Added a pinned commands section to the Command Palette Home page with context-menu actions for reordering pinned commands Updated Command Palette Shell provider to behave more like Windows Run, improving command execution and suggestions for network paths, NTFS paths, and other edge-case paths Improved Command Palette Window Walker by showing a loading state while open windows are queried during search Improved Command Palette list items by limiting visible tag pills to three and showing a +N overflow badge, preventing tags from crowding out titles Added a Command Palette All Apps setting to hide app description subtitles in search results for a cleaner list view Fixed Command Palette back navigation so the bottom command bar refreshes immediately when returning with Esc or Backspace Fixed Command Palette Extensions settings text so single command and fallback command counts use singular wording Improved Command Palette extension logging by routing extension messages to info, warning, or error logs according to their reported severity Updated Command Palette versioning to 0.11 Added stable Command Palette automation IDs so UI testing tools can reliably target controls and generated list items across sessions Fixed Command Palette Dock positioning when opening palette items from secondary displays, so the palette appears on the correct monitor Updated developer documentation with steps for debugging Command Palette directly through its Visual Studio solution filter Added Command Palette Remote Desktop support for connecting to arbitrary hostnames typed into the list page, in addition to discovered connections Improved Command Palette result scoring by synchronising fallback title and subtitle formatting so similar items rank consistently Added a Command Palette "Show details" / "Hide details" toggle (with an icon) to the context menu, replacing the previous separate entries FancyZones Added translator-comment guidance to the FancyZones Editor strings 'Space around zones' and 'Highlight distance' so localizers translate them as margin/padding and adjacent-zone detection distance, fixing misleading Japanese renderings File Explorer Fixed a Markdown preview crash on UTF-8 files (notably CJK content) that exceeded WebView2's NavigateToString byte limit by switching the size check to count UTF-8 bytes and falling back to the temp-file rendering path when the threshold is exceeded File Locksmith Fixed File Locksmith handling of Unicode file paths when passing paths between normal and elevated runs, preventing certain non-ASCII paths from being corrupted Grab And Move Fixed the LNK2038 C++/WinRT version mismatch breaking GrabAndMove on CI by adding the Microsoft.Windows.CppWinRT NuGet to GrabAndMove.vcxproj so it uses the repo-pinned CppWinRT instead of whatever the Windows SDK ships Removed the "NEW" tag from the Grab And Move entry in Settings now that the module has shipped through a full release Image Resizer Added live settings reload to Image Resizer so external changes to settings.json take effect immediately without relaunching the flow Improved Image Resizer accessibility so Narrator announces the Resize button by name and the window title now reads 'Image Resizer' instead of the generic 'WinUI Desktop' Keyboard Manager Enabled the redesigned Keyboard Manager editor by default, so new installations open the WinUI 3 editor without changing settings Mouse Without Borders Added Mouse Without Borders Refresh Connections to Quick Access and the Settings Dashboard so users can reconnect devices faster Refactored Mouse Without Borders logging cleanup with no intended user-facing behavior change Peek Added a 'Show file preview tooltip' toggle to Peek's Behavior settings so users can disable the on-hover metadata tooltip (filename, type, date modified, size), and fixed the binding so toggling off no longer leaves an empty popup attached PowerDisplay Improved Power Display by automatically disabling the feature after a detected DDC/CI capability crash and showing a Settings warning before users re-enable it Fixed Power Display flyout keyboard handling so pressing Escape closes the window Improved Power Display monitor detection by rescanning displays when the screen wakes and temporarily locking controls until the refresh completes Updated PowerToys documentation to include telemetry events for Grab And Move and Power Display Updated Power Display localization comments so the product name remains untranslated in UI strings, including the system tray tooltip Improved Power Display monitor discovery by distinguishing internal panels from external monitors before applying brightness controls, reducing unnecessary DDC/CI probing on built-in displays Fixed Power Display upgrades so existing per-monitor preferences are carried forward from older monitor IDs to the current stable IDs Added a Power Display Max compatibility mode setting that can find monitors skipped by standard DDC discovery, with an immediate rescan and warning in Settings when enabled Improved Power Display brightness, contrast, and volume sliders by committing changes after a short debounce and allowing mouse-wheel adjustments Fixed Power Display brightness, contrast, and volume controls on monitors whose native DDC/CI ranges are not 0-100 by scaling slider percentages correctly Added a Power Display Settings confirmation prompt before enabling the module and improved monitor diagnostics for troubleshooting Fixed Power Display per-monitor settings so toggles persist across restarts, monitor reordering, and transient discovery failures Added a built-in Power Display monitor blacklist so known problematic displays are skipped during DDC/CI discovery and reported in logs instead of being probed Fixed a Power Display false-positive crash detection when the host process exits cooperatively, so the safety lockout no longer triggers on clean shutdowns Removed the "NEW" tag from the Power Display entry in Settings now that the module has shipped through a full release Reworked the Power Display warning dialog with clearer messaging, distinct warning kinds, and a dedicated dialog view-model so users get more actionable guidance after a DDC/CI issue PowerToys Run Improved PowerToys Run Calculator to return a friendly error for expressions whose result is a complex number (e.g. sqrt(-1)) instead of throwing during decimal conversion Documented the third-party PowerToys Run plugin Community.PowerToys.Run.Plugin.DiskAnalyzer for scanning folders/drives to find the largest files and folders Quick Accent Updated Quick Accent’s popup UI to standard PowerToys styling while keeping the accent selector experience unchanged Improved Quick Accent language selection consistency by sharing the same language list between the accent popup and Settings UI Added Greek Polytonic as a Quick Accent language, making polytonic Greek characters available from matching letter keys and Settings in Fixed Quick Accent popup sizing, positioning, and selection glitches on high-DPI or multi-monitor setups, and improved Shift-key detection for navigation Settings Added Image Resizer size preset validation so empty or whitespace names are ignored, keeping presets named and easier to understand Fixed the Settings UI resource list by removing a duplicate Quick Accent Greek Polytonic language entry, allowing Settings builds to complete cleanly Improved Settings UI with refreshed PowerToys imagery, constrained OOBE/SCOOBE layouts, and cleaner General settings controls and icons Fixed the Settings “No shortcuts to show” empty-state message so it displays with a single period Updated Grab And Move settings localization guidance so the Korean translation for “Activation modifier key” uses the feature activation meaning instead of product activation wording Fixed the Quick Access flyout shortcut editor so clicking Reset no longer crashes PowerToys Settings and leaves the shortcut empty cleanly Fixed PowerToys auto-update so it now actually relaunches after install with a 'successfully updated' toast, backs up all JSON configs before updating with restore on detected corruption, and defaults AutoDownloadUpdates to true for fresh installs Renamed the OOBE overview "Learn" link label to "Documentation" so the call-to-action is clearer to first-time users Shortcut Guide Fixed Shortcut Guide key visuals to show readable key names instead of raw numeric key codes, while preserving arrow key glyph behavior Improved Shortcut Guide V2 reliability and accuracy by showing the configured shortcut, including additional PowerToys module shortcuts, matching app manifests correctly, and exiting cleanly from Esc or the close button in Added Shortcut Guide V2, a redesigned shortcut reference with built-in manifests for Windows, PowerToys, and common apps, plus taskbar/context-aware navigation and updated Settings, OOBE, docs, and installer support Renamed the Settings UI module label from "Shortcut Guide V2" to "Shortcut Guide" now that V2 is the only shipping version Fixed a Shortcut Guide V2 crash that occurred when the per-app Manifests directory was missing or unreadable, by treating the directory as empty in that case Reworded the Shortcut Guide module and OOBE descriptions so they better explain what V2 does and how to invoke it Workspaces Reworked the Workspaces editor with WPF Fluent theming (dropping ControlzEx and ModernWpf), refined fonts, spacing, and Mica background, and moved action buttons to the top with full-width scrolling ZoomIt Removed a stale Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary NuGet import from ZoomItBreak.vcxproj that was unused but broke the official build after the .NET 10 upgrade bumped the sibling project's WIL version Added webcam capture overlay and multi-clip append-with-transitions support to the ZoomIt recording/trim editor, exposed the new options in the ZoomIt Settings page, and fixed microphone/webcam selection-dialog bugs along the way Fixed ZoomIt's record-hotkey registration so when Alt is the only modifier the window-record hotkey (base XOR Alt) is no longer registered as a modifier-less key that had been hijacking every bare keypress Exposed ZoomIt's 16:9 aspect-ratio toggle for the screen-region recording hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+5) in the PowerToys Settings UI Development Build / dependency improvements: Updated PowerToys build and developer tooling to .NET 10, with Visual Studio 2026 now required for building from source Fixed Shortcut Guide v2 release signing by adding the YamlDotNet dependency to the signed binaries list Updated shared PowerToys .NET runtime and library packages from 10.0.7 to 10.0.8 for the latest servicing fixes Improved PowerToys build tooling so build scripts discover Visual Studio 2026 Insiders/Preview installations with C++ tools and skip unusable installs Updated PowerToys WinUI platform dependencies, including Windows App SDK 2.0.1 and WebView2, for apps and the Command Palette extension template Updated shared PowerToys .NET runtime and library packages from 10.0.6 to 10.0.7 for the latest servicing fixes Fixed Quick Accent release signing by adding PowerAccent.Common.dll to the signed binaries list Fixed Advanced Paste release signing by adding the Google Gemini-related dependency DLLs to the signed binaries list Updated Advanced Paste AI dependencies, including Semantic Kernel and provider connectors, to newer package versions CI & automation: Added a Telemetry PR Check workflow that detects telemetry event changes in pull requests and posts contributor guidance Updated GitHub issue triage automation by renaming the area-labeling workflow and removing the legacy product auto-label workflow Added GitHub issue triage automation that applies Product/Area labels to new or reopened issues and supports manual backfill Fixed GitHub issue auto-labeling by correcting Product label names so the workflow applies existing repository labels Added a GitHub Action and tester for issue triage that applies Product labels from issue template areas, with AI fallback and manual modes Fixed GitHub issue auto-labeling so the workflow can authenticate with GitHub Models and apply area labels again Updated spell-check CI expectations by removing obsolete tokens, reducing noisy advisory comments on pull requests Updated CI to skip automatic builds for draft pull requests until they are ready for review Fixed the README roadmap reference for v0.100 so it renders as a clickable milestone link Updated README download guidance to point users to release assets and changes the release notes link to the releases page Updated the GitHub issue tracker duplicate-resolution reply to more clearly point users to the original tracking issue To download the new release, head over to PowerToys official GitHub repo here.
-
-
Popular Contributors
-
Tell a friend
.thumb.png.b7089ebbdf00d96b3b92dddbd04bac02.png)
Recommended Posts