If only Microsoft could make it part of Windows by default instead of those lucky users who discover what PowerToys needing to submit their request to corporate IT and enduring either incredulity or dumb jokes about the naming.
Gatekeeping as "power user features" is silly, it's 2025 and many of these features have been built-in on other operating systems for a decade or more.
True, but one of the reasons that PowerToys can innovate and iterate so freely is not being tied to mainline Windows and all the enterprise and backward compatibility baggage that comes with.
One annoying thing (among others) I realized after upgrading to Windows 11 recently is the ability to position the taskbar on the right or left is gone. Microsoft and its all knowing Windows 11 team decided that having the taskbar anywhere except at the bottom doesn’t work well and removed this positioning feature that has existed for decades.
I doubt that PowerToys would add a feature for this, but it’d be cool if it happened.
They didn't remove it. The new taskbar and start menu were written for Windows 10x (a sandboxed version of windows meant for dual screen devices) when that was canceled Microsoft bolted them on top of Windows 10 added arbitrary hardware restrictions and released as Windows 11
I honestly don't get what the technical reason is. Surely no one is hardcoding pixel offsets somewhere. The rendering code likely doesn't care where it starts to render the taskbar and where the main display renders. It can obviously also be rendered without a taskbar below. The most effort is probably incorporating it into settings, but this is hopefully also not hardcoded. This all sounds like something a single employee could implement in one afternoon.
FancyZones is a must-have if you use an ultrawide monitor! I set mine up with two zones, where one takes up about 1/3 of the screen and the other takes up about 2/3.
Are you me? Exact same! The problem with dual monitors is either you're sat in front of the gap, or you need to pivot. This way you get a 'normal' monitor and a portrait section to the side, much better.
I have a pretty odd grid setup myself for a 55" TV monitor. Best part is holding shift and being able to snap a window to multiple zones. Let's me have a grid with tons of smaller zones that are useful for various apps when I need tiny windows and large ones when I don't.
I use 12 columns so I can still do this 1/3 - 2/3 split, but other proportions as well. I tend to have a chat app on the left quarter, browser in the middle half, and a music app on the right quarter. Lots more freedom than only two zones!
I set up three zones and a huge highlight distance between them. I can drag a window between zones and it resizes to those two zones combined. This way I can have three 1:1:1 windows or two 2:1 or 1:2 windows with the same single layout!
I've found splitting up my ultrawide into 6x2 cells, then you can use Ctrl+Shift to select every cell your mouse enters additively. I've wanted something like this for linux for a long time but haven't found anything.
Yes, it was basically gone for a decade or more. There’s no shared code. Though I’m sure they may have looked at the old code for inspiration for some of the Win32 stuff.
Aaahh, PowerToys - making Windows somewhat usable since 1996.
On a related note, before I'm forced to write my own, does anyone know of a Windows tool that allows keyboard based window navigation? Not the alt-tab faff, I mean like in terminal emulators and terminal multiplexers, I want to use say win-ctrl-arrows to move focus from the current window to the adjacent or overlapping visible window to the left, right etc.
I wrote https://github.com/EsportToys/TPMouse a while back with the “grid mode” that moves the mouse cursor by bisecting the screen coordinate incrementally.
Command Palette is the Mac/Linux style app picker that's nice and bloated and does what hitting the Windows key and Start Menu search should've done in 98SE. I've got it bound to Win+Shift+Space but it's laggy and dumb enough (doesn't learn what I'm always searching for and running??) to where I don't bother. My money's still on it eventually replacing the Windows key binding.
I can't believe I've never seen this before - I was scrolling through the list of tools and almost every one of them is something I've either wished I had or went out of my way to download some software. Thanks!
It is a little annoying that I had to install this in order to remap the capslock key on my laptop to a control key. That's all I use from powertoys, but I guess I'm glad it is at least feasible.
Readit News
SysInternals is also wild in encouraging running an .exe directly from the web via Sysinternals Live.
I found OpenHashTab to be a good tool for this in the meantime: https://github.com/namazso/OpenHashTab
That said, PowerToys was the first thing I installed on the new laptop.
Gatekeeping as "power user features" is silly, it's 2025 and many of these features have been built-in on other operating systems for a decade or more.
I doubt that PowerToys would add a feature for this, but it’d be cool if it happened.
One 32" 3840x2160 landscape and two 25" 2560x1440 portrait monitors is perfect for me.
These and Sysinternals (bought by Microsoft around 2006) were must have when I was still using Windows.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
On a related note, before I'm forced to write my own, does anyone know of a Windows tool that allows keyboard based window navigation? Not the alt-tab faff, I mean like in terminal emulators and terminal multiplexers, I want to use say win-ctrl-arrows to move focus from the current window to the adjacent or overlapping visible window to the left, right etc.
Someone must have done this already...
I use Raycast on MacOS, a Windows version is coming: https://www.raycast.com/windows