Users of Windows 95 and Windows XP may fondly remember PowerToys which was a collection of tools for Windows that add useful little features to the OS, like “command prompt here”, “Quick res” and Sens to X. They were handy but over time many of the features made their way into the OS and PowerToys disappeared.

Microsoft are bringing them back and this time as an open source project on GitHub. The initial plan is for two tools which will be released with source code in the Summer. The first one is a tool which adds a maximize to a desktop button.

The other one is a Windows key shortcut guide:

There are plans for other tools:

Full window manager including specific layouts for docking and undocking laptops

Keyboard shortcut manager

Win+R replacement

Better alt+tab including browser tab integration and search for running apps

Battery tracker

Batch file re-namer

Quick resolution swaps in taskbar

Mouse events without focus

Cmd (or PS or Bash) from here

Contents menu file browsing

Head over the GitHub page for the source and how to contribute.

Via neowin

Leave a Reply