If you are not familiar with PowerToys, it is a set of advanced utilities provided by Microsoft and the open source developer community. But here is our definitive guide on how to get the most out of your Windows.
The PowerToys They were born in the 90s as small software tools that Microsoft made available to the public for free and that allowed us to further customize the operating system. The old ones were accessible by downloading them one by one, but the current PowerToys come under a single application.
PowerToys are various tools such as: an application launcher, a massive file renamer, a color picker, a utility to customize shortcuts, etc. Microsoft frequently updates PowerToys with new features and fixes.
Microsoft has released an update patch for PowerToys 0.68, which launched a week ago along with a couple of new PowerToys. This contains all the features present in the previous version, as well as a series of bug fixes that I list below.
The changes coming to PowerToys this month to Windows 11
- Support Ctrl+V as activation shortcut for Paste as Plain Text, as some users have requested. Warning: Overriding a system default keyboard shortcut may have unintended consequences.
- Paste as plain text: Supports pasting multiple times like Ctrl+V does (by pressing the toggle key while holding down the modifier keys).
- Establish the default Paste as Plain Text keyboard shortcut to Ctrl+Win+Alt+V to avoid conflicts with the new Windows volume mixer keyboard shortcut.
- Add PowerToys Run option to disable thumbnail generation for files in order to reduce the cause of the failure.
You can download PowerToys 0.68.1 from the Microsoft Store using this link or from the official GitHub repository. If you already have PowerToys installed on your computer, the app will notify you of available updates, or you can update manually from settings.
For more advanced users or those who want to get the most out of Microsoft’s operating system, PowerToys are essential tools in your day to day: they save you having to download third-party apps and save you a lot of time.