Microsoft shares PowerToys' redesigned WinUI 3 Keyboard Manager, wants your feedback

For a while now, Microsoft has been working on updating the PowerToys user interface (UI) with the Fluent design to improve the consistency of the app such that it matches the overall Windows 11 theme, style, and feel.

As such, Niels Laute, an engineer at Microsoft working on WinUI and PowerToys, proposed back in 2022 the following changes:

Windows 11 introduces a new direction of Fluent Design - it would be great if all PowerToys features would look and feel native to the OS. WinUI 3 should make this an easy transition. Some things that come to mind:

• General
• Combining the remap key and shortcut into a single experience, making it a true "Keyboard Manager".
• Ability to (temporarily) turn on / off certain remappings.
• Adopting WinUI 3 (and it's default styling for Windows 11)
• Resolve common accessibility issues by adopting standard UI elements and colors
• Modern input (touch / pen)

Laute said that this UI redesign would help address various issues that had been reported.

Early last year in January, Microsoft published a mockup of the redesigned Keyboard Manager. However, it has been well over a year now and the tech giant is still asking people for feedback on it and looking for ways to improve, and it doesn't seem like all that has changed since then. Perhaps the project may finally be approaching completion and Microsoft is gauging public reaction before releasing it.

Kayla Cinnamon, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft for PowerToys and Windows developer experiences, posted on her official X handle:

Hopefully, it shouldn't be too long before Microsoft finally releases this.

Speaking of releases, the latest PowerToys update released a couple of days ago brings a performance boost to the Always On Top (AoT) utility and fixes various bugs including one that wouldn't let users create shortcuts. You can check that in our dedicated piece here.