Summary

  • PowerToys version 0.74.0 focuses on stability and improvements, with highlights including enhanced stability for WinUI3 utilities and a more stable FancyZones on Windows 11.
  • The update includes general improvements like automatic animation disabling, Windows App SDK upgrade, and improved usability when running PowerToys as administrator.
  • Built-in tools such as File Explorer add-ons and PowerToys Run have specific enhancements, addressing issues and adding new features like improved CPU usage, new activation methods, and bug fixes.

PowerToys is a very handy utility that allows you to supercharge your Windows usage experience through a collection of nifty tools that increase productivity. It's arguably a must-have app for your Windows usability arsenal and one that Microsoft regularly updates with new features, which isn't surprising given its popularity. Today, the Redmond tech firm has rolled out version 0.74.0 of PowerToys.

Although this release is focused more on stability and improvements, there are definitely some highlights. For example, WinUI3 utilities will be more stable thanks to an upgrade to Windows App SDK 1.4.1. Additionally, version 2.0 of Text Extractor is out with quality of life enhancements and a new overlay, table mode. FancyZones is considerably more stable on Windows 11 and you should see fewer crashes overall too.

Some other geneal improvements include the automatic turning off of animations in PowerToys if you disable them in Windows Settings, upgrading of the Windows App SDK dependency, usability improvements when running PowerToys as administrator, and updating the Win UI Community Toolkit dependency to version 8.0. That's not all though, there are specific enhancements for the built-in tools as well (such as enhancements for File Explorer add-ons), check out the detailed changelog below:

Awake

  • Added down-sampled variants to the application's icon. Thanks @morriscurtis!

Color Picker

  • After adding a new color in the editor, the history will scroll the new color into view. Thanks @peerpalo!

Crop and Lock

  • Fixed a Crop and Lock crash that would occur when trying to reparent a window crashes the target application. An error message is shown instead.

FancyZones

  • Set the process and main thread priority to normal.
  • Fixed handling newly created windows on Windows 11.
  • Fixed scenarios where opening the FancyZones Editor would reset the layouts.

File Explorer add-ons

  • Optimized CPU usage for generating SVG thumbnails.
  • Improved handling of Gcode Thumbnails, including JPG and QOI formats. Thanks @pedrolamas!
  • Better handled errors when sending telemetry, which were causing reported crashes.
  • Fixed some thumbnails not being shown centered like before the optimization.

File Locksmith

  • Shows files opened by processes with PID greater than 65535. Thanks @poke30744!
  • Fixed a GDI object leak in the context menu which would crash Explorer.

Find My Mouse

Hosts File Editor

  • Ignore the default ACME sample entries in the hosts file. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
  • Improved save error handling and added better error messages. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
  • Corrected a check for an error when signaling the application to start as administrator.
  • Refactored the context menu. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
  • Fixed dialogs overlapping the title bar after the upgrade to Windows App SDK 1.4. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Keyboard Manager

  • Distinguish between the regular minus key and the numpad minus key.

Mouse Without Borders

  • Fixed a crash when trying to restart the application.

Peek

  • Using Peek on HTML files will show a white background by default, similar to a browser's default behavior.
  • Fix a white flash on Dark theme when switching file and improved the development file preview detection and adjustments.

PowerRename

  • Fixed a crash caused by big counter values on the new enumeration method.

PowerToys Run

  • It's now possible to select which shell is used by the Shell plugin.
  • A combobox option type was added to the plugin options.
  • Fixed a bug in the Calculator plugin that was causing decimal numbers to be misinterpreted on locales where the dot (.) character isn't used as a decimal or digit separator.
  • Improved the Program plugin stability when it fails to load a program's thumbnail at startup.
  • The use of Pinyin for querying some plugins can now be turned on in Settings. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!
  • Refactored option types for plugin and added number, string and composite types to be used in the future. Thanks @htcfreek!
  • Fixed the entry for searching for Windows updates in the Settings plugin. Thanks @htcfreek!

Quick Accent

  • The "All languages" character set is now calculated by programmatically querying the characters for every available language. Thanks @dannysummerlin!
  • Added é to the Norwegian and Swedish languages. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
  • Added a runtime cache to the "All languages" character set, to only calculate accents once per key.

Registry Preview

  • Fixed focusing issues at startup.
  • Improved the data visualization to show data in a similar way to the Windows Registry Editor. Thanks @dillydylann!

Runner

  • Fixed hanging when a bug report was generated from the flyout. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Settings

  • Improved the way the OOBE window reacts to Windows theme change.
  • Fixed an issue that made it impossible to change the "Switch between windows in the current zone" "Next window" shortcut for FancyZones.
  • Fixed a crash when entering a duplicate name for a color in the Color Picker page and improved clean up when cancelling a color edit. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Text Extractor

  • Text Extractor 2.0, with a new overlay, table mode and more Quality of Life improvements. Thanks @TheJoeFin!

Documentation

Development

  • Fixed PowerToys Run DateTime plugin tests that were failing depending on locale, so that they can be run correctly on all dev machines.
  • Fixed PowerToys Run System plugin tests that were failing for certain network interfaces, so that they can be run correctly on all dev machines. Thanks @snickler!
  • Fixed a markdown bug on the GitHub /helped command.
  • Switched build pipelines to a new agent pool. Thanks @DHowett!
  • New .cs files created in Visual Studio get the header added automatically. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

All in all, it's pretty clear that this is an update that revolves around improving the existing PowerToys experience rather than adding new tools. However, you should consider visiting the GitHub repository if you have new feature requests or want to download the latest version of PowerToys. If you already have the app installed, you can check for updates in the settings section directly.