The PowerToys are a set of very useful tools developed by Microsoft to make it easier for users to do day-to-day with their operating system and improve the way they work with the PC. These tools saw the light of day for the first time in the era of Windows 95, although they have been missing for two decades, nothing of them being surpassed. Now, Microsoft has resurrected these tools as an OpenSource Kit for Windows. The new PowerToys are constantly evolving, and a few hours ago a new version has just reached users, 0.37, which, to the disappointment of people, has left a long-awaited function in the pipeline.
Microsoft PowerToys offer us a series of tools designed to help us perform certain tasks in the OS that, otherwise, would be more complicated. The tools that we can find in this kit are:
- Color selector: allows us to select the hexadecimal code of any color that we see on the screen.
- FancyZones: allows us to divide the screen into several customizable parts to anchor any window within them.
- SVG and MD plugin for browser: allows you to see the preview of these files.
- Photo editor: allows us to resize and process images in batches, from the context menu.
- Key mapping: Allows you to reassign the operation of any key on the keyboard and change shortcuts.
- Massive file renamer, to rename many files at the same time.
- Run, a very simple and customizable program launcher.
- Windows keyboard shortcut guide.
This month we have already seen two updates to this toolkit: 0.35 (stable) and 0.36 (unstable). And, although it was expected to see a new PowerToy in the new 0.37 version , it seems that we will still have to wait a little longer.
What’s new in Microsoft PowerToys 0.37
This new version of the tools changes a large amount of the internal code of the program in order to continue improving it. And, therefore, it is the first version that requires Windows 10 1903 or higher to run. Users with Windows versions of 2018, or earlier, will no longer be able to use these tools.
In addition, the different tools that make up this program have been improved, adding functions and features and correcting errors in order to obtain the best possible performance:
- FancyZones : fixed bugs in the interface, an error when creating a custom layout and the screen resolution has been added.
- PowerRename : added capitalization option, and better performance with very large amounts of files.
- Run – Using XAML, disabled plugins are no longer loading and VS Code plugins already appear.
- Keyboard Manager : Now has a separate, high-priority process, so it shouldn’t stop working.
- Color Picker : Improves activation and “Esc to close” no longer appears.
- Shortcut Guide : The shortcut guide applications are excluded.
Version 1 of the program settings has also been eliminated, in HTML, the installer and the general accessibility of the program have been improved so that all types of users can better enjoy this software.
Download or update
This new version is now available, like the previous ones, for free. Being an OpenSource program, available on GitHub, we can download this latest version from this link . And if we already have the program installed on our computer, we can download and install the new version automatically from the PowerToys settings section.
If you were waiting for the Toy to activate and deactivate the microphone and webcam with one click, you will have to keep waiting. Microsoft has considered that it is not yet stable enough and has decided to delay its arrival even more. To use it, we can install version 0.36, or wait for 0.38, “beta” versions that already include this tool.
