In the era of Windows 95, Microsoft launched a series of tools designed to improve the productivity of the most demanding users: the well-known PowerToys . However, it is not known why these tools were forgotten after this system for more than a decade, until now. More than a year ago, Microsoft decided to resurrect its PowerToys as an open source project in order to once again improve user productivity, although this time targeting Windows 10. And Microsoft did not want to end the year without releasing the latest update tool maintenance: the new version 0.29.
The tools that are included in these new PowerToys are:
- Color picker : a tool with which to select any color that appears on the PC screen.
- Sophisticated layouts: allows you to create virtual window layouts where you can place each of your open windows, improving productivity on large screens and dual monitor configurations.
- File Explorer : allows us to enable certain functions in the file explorer.
- Image resizing: a tool to automatically resize images.
- Keyboard manager : allows us to reassign keys and shortcuts on the PC.
- Advanced Renaming – A very advanced batch file renamer.
- PowerToys Launcher – An advanced file and program finder.
- Keyboard shortcut guide : allows us to see the main PC keyboard shortcuts.
In addition, Microsoft is working on a new tool that will allow us to control video calls by being able to activate or deactivate the microphone with a single click. And Although this feature should have arrived some versions ago, with this new version 0.29 it is not yet available. We will have to wait a little longer to enjoy it, probably version 0.30 that will arrive in early 2021.
What’s new in PowerToys 0.29
This new version of the tools does not bring major changes or new features, but rather focuses on correcting errors and improving the general operation of the program. The main changes that we will find in them are:
- General:
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- Improved the bug reporting system.
- Improvements in translations.
- Added CodeQL.
- The migration from .NET Core to ARM64 is complete, although two dependencies still need to be updated.
- Color picker:
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- Error correction.
- Possibility of providing the name of the color we select.
- Sophisticated designs:
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- Error correction.
- Allows Windows Snap to be used for desktops that do not have a layout applied and for excluded list applications.
- PowerToys Executor:
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- Improved performance.
- Now supports accented characters.
- Installer:
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- Possibility to extract the MSI.
- Removed floating notifications during installation.
Download and install
If we still don’t have Microsoft PowerToys installed on our PC, we can download them for free from GitHub . Downloading and installing PowerToys in Windows is a very fast and simple process, and since we can choose which ones we want to enable and which ones we don’t, we won’t have to have functions that we don’t need enabled on the PC.
Users who already have a previous version of these tools installed, such as 0.27, will see a notice in Windows 10 that will notify them of the availability of this new version. Through this notice they can choose when they want to install the new version, if they want to do it right now, or wait for another time. The update process is totally automatic and very fast; in a few seconds we will have the new PowerToys 0.29 installed and running on our PC.
