Microsoft has issued its September update on its PowerToys GitHub repository announcing the project’s first preview release. Microsoft announced that it was rebooting PowerToys which was an initiative to develop tools for power users back in the Windows 95 and Windows XP eras. With the reboot, all the tools are open source and hosted on GitHub.
In the September update, Microsoft has announced the availability of two preview quality utilities as well as the tools and documentation necessary to build the utilities from source. The first utility is called FancyZones; it’s a window manager that allows you to create complex window layouts which you can quickly snap different windows into.
The second tool is Windows key shortcut guide; this tool allows you to hold the Windows key down to bring up the keyboard shortcuts available to you for the current state of the desktop, for example, if you have a program open, it will dynamically show you the keyboard shortcut for snapping the window, whereas if you’re just on the desktop, it won’t show the windows snapping shortcuts.
Microsoft took the time to announce that it has several other utilities in the pipeline, these include: a maximise to new desktop widget, a process terminate tool, a batch file renamer, and an animated gif screen recorder.
If you’d like to test out the newly available PowerToys programs, just head over the PowerToys Release page on GitHub, press the Assets drop down, and select the PowerToysSetup.msi file. Once downloaded, you’ll be able to run the installer and begin using the tools.