PowerToys 0.81 is out with AI-powered Advanced Paste

A custom PowerToys logo with a frosted glass background and rainbow stripes

With all the AI buzz and Microsoft hosting major events to showcase new AI-powered experiences for Windows, it was just a matter of time before Microsoft added some AI to PowerToys, its set of advanced utilities for Windows 10 and 11 users.

Version 0.81 is now available for download with a new AI-powered feature called "Advanced Paste," which can convert something you copied to another format. For example, you copied some Python code and then it can convert it to C# with comments. Here is the official description:

Advanced Paste is An Al powered tool to put your clipboard content into any format you need, focused towards developer workflows. Note: this will replace the formatted text in your clipboard with the selected format.

You can try it by copying something and then pressing Win + Shift + V to bring up the tool's UI. Next, you can paste the result with the Win + Ctrl + Alt + V shortcut.

Here are the update highlights:

New utility: Advanced Paste, an AI powered tool to convert your clipboard content into another format.

Command Not Found now uses the PowerShell Gallery release and now supports ARM64.

Fixed most accessibility issues opened after the latest accessibility review.

Refactored, packaged and released the main Environment Variables Editor, Hosts File Editor and Registry Preview utilities functionality as controls to be integrated into DevHome.

And here is the complete changelog:

General:

Fixed crashes on older CPUS by updating .NET to 8.0.4. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)

Advanced Paste

New utility: Advanced Paste, an AI powered tool to convert your clipboard content into another format.

Always On Top

Enable border anti-aliasing.

Color Picker

Improved accessibility by making the Settings and Copy to clipboard buttons focusable.

Improved accessibility by supporting picking a color using the keyboard.

Command Not Found

Upgraded the Command Not Found to use the new PowerShell Gallery release and support ARM64.

Environment Variables Editor

Refactored, packaged and released the main Environment Variables Editor functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome.

FancyZones

Fixed window wrap around behavior when overriding Windows key and arrow shortcuts on single monitor scenarios.

Improved accessibility of the editor by listing the keyboard shortcuts in the Canvas Editor.

File Explorer add-ons

Updated Monaco to 0.47 and added the new sticky scroll setting for DevFiles viewer.

Added the new font size setting for DevFiles viewer.

Added support for .srt (subtitle) file previewing in DevFiles viewer.

Hosts File Editor

Refactored, packaged and released the main Hosts File Editor functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome.

Image Resizer

Supported narrator announcing the checkboxes in the UI and the sizes combobox.

Improved accessibility by increasing contrast in the text color of combobox items.

Installer

Fixed some install failures when the folders the DSC module is to be installed in isn't accessible by the WiX installer. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)

Detecting install location for DSC now uses registry instead of WMI to improve performance.

Fixed an error causing the machine scope installer to not install correctly in machines where the documents folder is in a UNC network path. We're still working in a fix for the user scope installer.

Keyboard Manager

Fixed startup crashes in the editor when the Visual C++ Redistributable wasn't installed. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)

Fixed an accessibility issue where the first button wasn't focused after adding a new row in the editor.

Environment Variables are now expanded in arguments of programs started through a shortcut.

Paste as Plain Text

Paste as Plain Text was removed as a separate utility, since its functionality is now part of the Advanced Paste utility.

Peek

Updated icons, tweaked UI and refactored internal code.

Updated Monaco to 0.47 and added the new sticky scroll setting for DevFiles viewer.

Added the new font size setting for DevFiles viewer.

Upgrade the SharpCompress dependency to 0.37.2 and fixed archive parsing.

Fixed aliasing in the image viewer.

Added support for .srt (subtitle) file previewing in DevFiles viewer.

Power Rename

Fixed the descriptions that were mixed up in the regex helper (\S and \w).

PowerToys Run

Added support for UNC paths starting with // in the Folder plugin.

Fixed the plugin load failed message to list the failed plugins.

Icons for MSIX packages are now updated when a package update is detected.

Use Mica backdrop instead of Acrylic to fix random crashes caused by the Windows composition being momentarily turned off.

Improved accessibility in the results list action buttons by improving contrast of hovered/focused buttons.

Quick Accent

Added support for the Esperanto character set.

Added the ǽ and ϑ characters.

Registry Preview

Refactored, packaged and released the main Registry Preview functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome. Thanks @dabhattimsft for validating and integrating into DevHome!

Text Extractor

Fixed an issue causing the Settings page to not be opened when clicking the Settings button in Text Extractor's overlay. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)

Settings

Improved UI ordering of the File Explorer add-ons.

Applied fixes to theme overriding and cleaned up unneeded code.

Fixed misspells in references to the Hosts File Editor utility.

Improved accessibility of the Select Folder button in the Settings Backup UI.

Improved accessibility by improving focus and tab navigation in the ColorPicker page.

Added a description to the fallback encoder setting in the Image Resizer page.

Refactored and improved performance in the PowerToys Run plugins UI in the Settings page.

Fixed a crash when a user cleared the contents of a Number Box in the PowerToys Run plugins additional options.

Update the PATH environment variables with the user scope PATH when entering the Command Not Found page to improve PowerShell detection.