Quick Answer
PowerToys is a free and open-source app that lets you customize the behavior of your Windows PC. While it packs dozens of tools and utilities, you can use these if you’re just getting started: FancyZones, Always On Top, File Explorer Add-Ons, Image Resizer, PowerRename, Keyboard Manager, Peek, PowerToys Run, Shortcut Guide, Text Extractor.
PowerToys is a free and open-source tool from Microsoft to help you customize your Windows PC and extend its functionality beyond what’s possible by default. It’s one of the go-to Windows customization tools for power users, and you must definitely install it on your PC to get the most out of it.
On Microsoft PowerToys, you’ll find dozens of tools and utilities spread across multiple categories, ranging from Window Management and File Management to Advanced and System Tools. Getting started with PowerToys is easy, and you can use it on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs.
That said, if you’re just getting started with Microsoft PowerToys, you may wonder which tools to install first. To that end, we’ve got a list of all the essential PowerToys tools you must install and start using on your Windows PC to streamline everyday tasks, boost productivity, and enhance the overall experience.
Table of Contents
Fancy Zones: Snap Windows Into Preferred Layouts
FancyZones is a core PowerToys tool that simplifies window management on Windows PCs. While Windows’ Snap Assist feature is quite useful and lets you snap windows by dragging them to the edges or corners of the screen, it doesn’t support custom layouts and lacks advanced multitasking features.
With FancyZones, though, you can create custom layouts wherein you can define as many zones as you want in any configuration, per your needs. If you use a multi-monitor setup, you can even set up different layouts for each of them. That way, it’s easier to manage windows across multiple screens.
What’s also nice about FancyZones is that it remembers and automatically restores window positions after a resolution or layout change. This may not always work as expected, though.
FancyZones offers extensive customization options. As such, you can control things like the appearance and behavior of zones and the appearance of windows in zones, among other things. You can also exclude specific apps to prevent them from snapping into your FancyZone-configured zones.
Always On Top: Make a Windows Always Visible
While you can snap app windows into places to work on multiple apps at once, there are times when you want an app to always be visible on your screen, be it for monitoring an ongoing process or referencing information. Microsoft PowerToys’ Always On Top is a handy tool for such scenarios.
With Always On Top, you can easily pin a window to the top. That way, all other app windows—both existing and new—will open behind it. To pin a window, open it and press the Win+Ctrl+T shortcut. Press it again to unpin.
Always On Top offers a few options to customize its behavior. A notable one is Excluded Apps, which lets you set specific apps to be excluded from pinning on top. This is useful when you don’t want unwanted apps pinned to the top of your screen.
File Explorer Add-Ons: Preview More File Formats in File Explorer
File Explorer comes with a Preview Pane, which provides inline previews for files without needing to open them, saving you time and effort. However, it can preview only select file types; you don’t get previews for PDF, SVG, source code, and Markdown files, among others.
The File Explorer Add-Ons utility addresses this. Once you install this PowerToys utility, it adds support for a bunch of file types, enabling you to preview them in the Preview Pane. You can configure which files the Preview Pane shows by flipping the toggle next to file types in the utility’s settings. In some cases, you may need to reboot your PC for the changes to take effect.
Make sure you’ve got the Preview Pane enabled to preview files. To do this, open File Explorer, click View in the command bar at the top and select Preview Pane. Or use the Alt+P shortcut.
Image Resizer: Quickly Resize Images
If you work with a lot of images and need to resize them to make them fit for use, PowerToys’ Image Resizer is a must-have utility for you. As the name implies, Image Resizer lets you quickly resize images directly from the File Explorer window, eliminating the need to open them in a dedicated tool and resize them manually. The best part? It supports batch processing, so you can resize multiple image files at once.
What’s also nice about Image Resizer is that it’s highly customizable. This means you can create presets—predefined configurations of your preferred sizes—to quickly resize images. For example, if you need to resize images to 1920 x 1080 pixels, you can create a preset for it, which you can use to reset your image files quickly.
Besides setting up presets, Image Resizer also lets you configure the encoder, quality level, compression, and filename format, among other things. This gives you more flexibility and control over the resized image files.
PowerRename: Bulk Rename Files Instantly
Similar to simplifying image resizing, PowerToys also has a utility that makes bulk renaming files easier. It’s called PowerRename, and it packs all the options you need to rename files on your Windows PC.
For example, it includes basic search and replace functionality, which lets you target a specific part of the file name and replace it. Then, there’s support for regular expressions or RegEx that allows you to identify bits in file names and patterns for advanced renaming and sequential numbering to add sequential numbers to file names.
In addition, it also gives you a real-time preview of the file names. That way, you can see how the file names will change before confirming. You can, still, of course, revert changes after renaming in case of mistakes or unintended changes to file names.
Keyboard Manager: Customize the Keyboard Behavior
Keyboard Manager is a PowerToys utility that allows you to redefine the keys on your keyboard. In other words, it lets you control how the keys behave when you press them. This can come in handy in various scenarios.
Let’s say you’ve got a broken key on your keyboard. With Keyboard Manager, you can reassign the broken key to a lesser-known key on your keyboard. Similarly, if you use certain keyboard shortcuts regularly—but find them inconvenient—you can modify them to something you find more comfortable.
Another interesting use case for Keyboard Manager is to set up a key to insert a specific string of text. So, if you don’t use, say, the Caps Lock on your keyboard, you can set it up to enter your most-used text, like your contact text or a boilerplate code, with a simple press.
Remapping a key or remapping a shortcut may sound intimidating. But Keyboard Manager’s graphical approach makes it pretty straightforward. You can choose to apply the remappings globally or only in specific apps.
Peek: Preview File Contents Without Opening Them
Another macOS feature I miss on my Windows PC is Quick Look, which lets you quickly preview the contents of a file without opening it. Thankfully, PowerToys has the Peek tool, which gives me a similar experience on my Windows PC, and it’s one of the first PowerToys tools I install right after installing the app.
With Peek installed, all you need to do is select the file you want to preview and press the Ctrl+Spacebar shortcut. This will open a floating window on your screen, allowing you to quickly glance at the file.
You can then choose to open the file in the default program for such file types. Or you may pin the window to keep it on top of other app windows. Peek lets you customize some of the preview behavior from its settings.
PowerToys Run: Launch Apps/Files and Perform Other Operations Quickly
You’ve probably heard of the Spotlight feature on macOS. It’s a convenient way to look things up and perform other trivial operations on your Mac. Sadly, Microsoft doesn’t offer a similar feature on Windows. But you can mimic it using the PowerToys Run utility.
PowerToys Run is essentially a quick launcher for Windows. You can invoke it by pressing the Alt+Spacebar keyboard shortcut. Once done, you can use it to search and launch apps, find files and folders on your PC, perform calculations, and convert units, among other things. You can even carry out web searches directly from the Run window.
If you want more functionality, you can install plugins. Run has plenty of plugins to choose from on its GitHub. For instance, you can use the SSH plugin to directly connect to SSH clients from Run. Similarly, there’s the Spotify plugin to directly search Spotify, Weather for real-time weather information, and ChatGPT to ask questions to ChatGPT.
PowerToys Run is highly customizable, and you can configure its appearance and behavior per your preference by heading to its settings in PowerToys.
Shortcut Guide: View a Cheat Sheet of Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
If you’ve recently switched from Linux or macOS to Windows, it may take you a while to learn the various Windows keyboard shortcuts before you can start using your PC effortlessly. However, PowerToys’ Shortcut Guide tool ensures you feel right at home.
Shortcut Guide essentially gives you an overlay on your screen with a list of all the common Windows keyboard shortcuts. To access it, press and hold the Windows key (typically for 900 ms). This will bring up the overlay, displaying all the keyboard shortcuts and what they do. You can then press the corresponding key on your keyboard to perform the action or let go of the Windows key to exit.
Text Extractor: Copy Text from Anywhere on the Screen
As someone who uses macOS alongside Windows, I miss macOS’ Live Text feature when I’m using my Windows PC. For those unaware, Live Text lets you select and copy text directly from images in supported apps.
Thankfully, PowerToys has a tool called Text Extractor, which lets you copy text from anywhere on your screen, be it images or videos. All you need to do is invoke it using the Win+Shift+T shortcut and select the text. The tool will then copy it to your clipboard automatically. You can then paste the text wherever you want, just like you paste any other text.
PowerToys Has Plenty More Tools
Those are all the essential PowerToys tools you need to get started. But the list doesn’t end here. There are many more useful PowerToys tools, such as Workspaces, Advanced Paste, Registry Preview, Command Not Found, and more, that you can explore once you install the app on your PC.
Besides, PowerToys has an active open-source community, so new tools get added to the library regularly. Likewise, underlying issues with existing tools are also fixed promptly.
