Microsoft PowerToys

Downloads & Release notes | Contributing to PowerToys | What's Happening | Roadmap

Build status

Architecture	Master	Stable	Installer
x64

About

Microsoft PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows 10 experience for greater productivity. For more info on PowerToys overviews and guides, or any other tools and resources for Windows development environments, head over to docs.microsoft.com!

	Current utilities:
Color Picker	FancyZones	File Explorer Add-ons
Image Resizer	Keyboard Manager	PowerRename
PowerToys Run	Shortcut Guide	Video Conference Mute (Experimental)

Installing and running Microsoft PowerToys

Requirements

• Windows 10 v1903 (build 18362) or better preferred, Windows 10 v1803 (build 17134) minimum.
• Have .NET Core 3.1 Desktop Runtime. The installer should handle this but we want to directly make people aware.

Via GitHub with EXE [Recommended]

Stable version

Install from the Microsoft PowerToys GitHub releases page. Click on Assets to show the files available in the release and then click on PowerToysSetup-0.33.1-x64.exe to download the PowerToys installer.

This is our preferred method.

Experimental version

To install the Video Conference mute, please use the v0.28 pre-release experimental version of PowerToys to try out this version. It includes all improvements from v0.27 in addition to the Video conference utility. Click on Assets to show the files available in the release and then download the .exe installer.

We hope to have an updated version in February 2021 with the new DirectShow driver.

Via WinGet (Preview)

Download PowerToys from WinGet. To install PowerToys, run the following command from the command line / PowerShell:

WinGet install powertoys

Other install methods

There are community driven install methods such as Chocolatey and Scoop. If these are your preferred install solutions, this will have the install instructions.

Processor support

We currently support the matrix below.

x64	x86	ARM64
Supported	Issue #602	Issue #490

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions of all types. Help spec'ing, design, documentation, finding bugs are ways everyone can help on top of coding features / bug fixes. We are excited to work with the power user community to build a set of tools for helping you get the most out of Windows.

We ask that before you start work on a feature that you would like to contribute, please read our Contributor's Guide. We will be happy to work with you to figure out the best approach, provide guidance and mentorship throughout feature development, and help avoid any wasted or duplicate effort.

Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution.

For guidance on developing for PowerToys, please read the developer docs for a detailed breakdown. This includes how to setup your computer to compile.

What's Happening

PowerToys Roadmap

Our prioritized roadmap of features and utilities that the core team is focusing on.

0.33 - February 2021 Update

Our goals for v0.33 release cycle was to add in some critical new functionality into the new user experience as well as a plug-in manager for PowerToys Run. In addition, we feel we are near ready to add in Video Conference mute into the stable release pending feedback from the pending 0.34 experimental release. The 0.34 experimental release will happen week of March 8th toward the end of the week pending testing.

Our prioritized roadmap of features and utilities that the core team is focusing on for the near future. We fixed a lot of localization issues from our initial release but we may not still be perfect. If you find an issue, please file a localization bug.

Highlights from v0.33 Stable/0.34 Experimental

General

• Updated overview links to be language agnostic to the docs site.
• 'First time load' experience. The hope is a quick, light way to learn about basic functionality. We have some more work to do and want to also use the same framework for teaching about updates as well.
• Localization corrections

FancyZones

• Adjusted editor UX based on feedback. Thanks @niels9001!
• New options to change zone activation algorithm.

File Explorer

• Improved how SVG images are previewed in the preview pane, thanks@Drakula44!
• @Aaron-Junker has created a proof of concept for using Monaco editor for previewing dev files. This will enable over 125+ file types.

PowerToys Run

• Plugin Manager now is in settings. You can directly turn on / off, include items in general search, and change the action key! Thanks @htcfreek for the great feedback!
• Improved support for additional window managers by abstracting out shell process calls. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fix for PT Run registering the hotkey on non-supported OS versions.
• ~ will now act as the user home directory in Folder plugin. Thanks @davidegiacometti
• Service plugin has adjusted status messages

Video Conference Mute (Experimental)

• Adjust video muting to leverage DirectShow.
• Goal is to have 0.34 experimental release week of March 8th.

Settings

• When restarting as admin, the settings now will reopen. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

ARM64 Progress

• Investigation on how we'll accomplish Settings with the XAML Island and WPF app.

Community contributions

We'd like to directly mention (in alphabetical order) for their continued community support this month and helping directly make PowerToys a better piece of software.

@Aaron-Junker, @davidegiacometti, @Drakula44, @htcfreek, @Jay-o-Way, @niels9001, and @notDevagya

What is being planned for v0.35 - March 2021

For v0.35, we are planning to work on:

• Stability and bug fixes
• FZ Editor hotkey layout swap support
• Integrating VCM in main release
• Start process for removal support for old settings system and migrating our minimum OS version to Windows 10 1903.

PowerToys Community

The PowerToys team is extremely grateful to have the support of an amazing active community. The work you do is incredibly important. PowerToys wouldn’t be nearly what it is today without your help filing bugs, updating documentation, guiding the design, or writing features. We want to say thank you and take time to recognize your work.

Code of Conduct

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct.

Privacy Statement

The application logs basic telemetry. Our Telemetry Data page (Coming Soon) has the trends from the telemetry. Please read the Microsoft privacy statement for more information.