PowerToys just added several new utilities and added new features for existing tools.
Two of the new utilities improve mouse use. Mouse Button Lock allows you to press and hold your mouse button down for a moment and then have your PC treat the input as if you've kept that button down. The tool improves accessibility for those who struggle to hold a mouse button down as they drag an item across the screen.
CursorHide is a smaller utility that hides the mouse pointer on your screen after a brief period of inactivity.
The quick-access shelf in Command Palette is an optional feature that shows pins below the search box.
PowerToys | Free at GitHub | Free at Microsoft Store
This collection of utilities includes a large library of features to enhance the Windows experience. PowerToys is designed with power users in mind, but it has handy features for people who just use their PC for everyday computing too.
Here are the highlights from the latest build of PowerToys, as shared by Microsoft:
Mouse Button Lock and CursorHide
- Holding a mouse button down during a long drag or selection can be tiring. With Mouse Button Lock, press and hold a button for a moment, then let go. Windows keeps treating it as held, so you can continue dragging or selecting until you click any button. This is especially useful for gaming, working in professional applications that require extensive dragging and selection, and improving accessibility for users who find it difficult to hold down a mouse button for extended periods.
- CursorHide is the second new mouse utility. It hides the mouse pointer while you type, after a period of inactivity, or both, and shows it again as soon as you move the mouse.
Command Palette gets a quick-access shelf
Compact mode in 0.101 kept Command Palette out of the way until you needed results. Now your favorite commands can be one keystroke away too. Turn on the quick-access shelf in Settings > Appearance > Compact mode to show your pins below the search box while the palette is collapsed. Press Alt+1 through Alt+9 to launch them, or Alt+Shift+number to select one without running it. Drag to reorder, right-click for more actions, and optionally show recent commands and apps next to your pins.
The shelf is just one part of a big Command Palette update:
- Settings search: Fuzzy search finds options, extensions, commands, aliases, and assigned shortcuts, then takes you straight to them.
- Keyboard-first Dock: Press Win+Alt+J to focus the dock and move between its items from the keyboard.
- Copilot key support: Choose Command Palette as the Copilot key app in Windows Settings, and press the key again to toggle the palette.
- Multiple clocks: Pin several dock clocks, each with its own time zone and format.
- Language and links: Pick an app language for Command Palette, and copy links that open a page, run a command, or jump to a specific setting.
- Polish: Sharper app icons, faster grid and gallery browsing, results that keep loading at the end of a list, and clearer nested menus.
ZoomIt adds snip dictation
ZoomIt can now capture what you say along with what you snip. Turn on Snip with dictation in the ZoomIt settings, then press Space while you drag out a snip and describe what you're capturing. ZoomIt transcribes your speech on your device, and a single paste delivers both the screenshot and your text. Dictation uses the microphone selected under Record.
ZoomIt also gets smooth zoom transitions, better audio pacing in recordings, and a fix for silent recordings on multichannel and spatial-audio devices.
New command-line tools
More of PowerToys can now be scripted from the terminal:
- Advanced Paste: Run built-in and custom actions without opening the UI, using files, stdin/stdout, or the clipboard. AI actions use your configured providers and policies.
- Light Switch: Check status, set or toggle the theme, and manage schedules, with JSON output.
- Settings: See which utilities are enabled, and turn them on or off even while PowerToys isn't running.
- Peek: Preview multiple files and folders from the command line.
- PowerDisplay: JSON Lines output makes results and errors easy to consume from scripts.
- On your PATH: FancyZones, Image Resizer, File Locksmith, and PowerDisplay commands now work from any terminal folder.
Keyboard Manager adds tap-alone remaps and easier editing
Keyboard Manager now supports tap-alone remaps. Tap a key by itself to trigger a different action, while the key keeps working normally in shortcuts and mouse combinations. Large remapping lists are easier to manage too, with search, modifier and app filters, and bulk deletion.
The new editor also gets a searchable key picker, so you can select any key, including media keys or keys your keyboard doesn't have, and build a full shortcut with just the mouse. Recording now only listens while the editor is in focus, and Tab moves you out of the recording field. IT admins can also deploy and export remapping profiles with DSC v3.
Other notable changes
- Color Picker and Text Extractor: Both move to WinUI 3, with a new overlay, editor, and magnifier for Color Picker. Your existing shortcuts and settings carry over.
- FancyZones: Scroll the mouse wheel while dragging a window to switch layouts, with an optional indicator showing the selected layout's name.
- Peek: Added read-only SQLite previews, file and subfolder counts with scanning progress for folders, a plain-text fallback, and Alt+Left/Alt+Right navigation between files.
- Screen Ruler: Measure in device-independent pixels to account for each monitor's scaling, with improved edge detection.
- Environment Variables: A new Remove duplicates action cleans up PATH while keeping the original order.
- Quick Accent: A searchable character reference in Settings lets you browse language sets and copy characters directly.
- Grab and Move: Exclude specific apps so they keep their normal modifier-key behavior.
- Shortcut Guide: Added shortcuts for Claude Desktop and Ableton Live, and made indexing more resilient to malformed manifests.
- Workspaces: Now asks for confirmation before launching an unverified app configured to run as administrator.
- Awake: Windows can now turn off the display while the PC is locked, without ending your keep-awake session.
- New+: Fixed a File Explorer memory leak and improved long-path handling.
- Settings: Added an interactive animated welcome scene, fixed a memory leak when switching pages, and kept module on/off preferences when a utility fails to load.
PowerToys has been one of my favorite Windows apps for a long time, and it is also a favorite of several members of our team at Windows Central. The app has a massive library of utilities that can be enabled or disabled, making it a great choice for casual PC users and power users.
PowerToys is also interesting to follow because it inspires the development of Windows 11. The newly announced Search experience for Windows 11 clearly takes some cues from PowerToys run and Command Palette.
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