Microsoft brought back PowerToys last year, and the company has slowly been fleshing out the set of utilities for Windows power users ever since.
The latest version is PowerToys v0.12, which:
- Adds a brand new batch file renaming tool called PowerRename
- Brings multi-monitor support to the previously-released FancyZones window manager
- Includes initial support for Dark Mode
You can find the latest PowerToys installer at Github.
In case the fact that the project is now hosted at Github didn’t make it clear, one of the key differences between the modern version of PowerToys and the classic Windows 95 version is that the new PowerToys is open source.
That means you can download the source code and/or contribute your own code.
Just looking to try out the utilities? FancyZones lets you create custom window layouts and quickly send apps to your preferred zones. The Shortcut tool lets you view a list of relevant Windows keyboard shortcuts when you hold the Windows key for more than a second. And the new PowerRaname tool is a Windows Shell Extension that lets you search and replace regular expressions for bulk file renaming jobs.
PowerToys developers are also working on a new tool for terminating Windows processes, a screen recorder that saves the output as an animated GIF, and a maximize to new desktop widget.
I had no idea about this Fancy Zones feature. Ive been asking for advanced window tiling for years. As a fan of i3wm, this feature just moved Windows 10 up a notch in my books.
WinSplit Revolution v11.04 still working on Windows 10 if anyone wants a good tiling manager. As windows copies every Linux desktop feature at some point it’ll be efficiently usable. Now they’re planning Simple Screen Recorder with this tool. For me dual-pane-explorer on demand still the biggest pain point! Double commander is a close but frustrating workaround.
Yeah i just don’t like using 3rd party software to achieve features like that