Over the past months, PowerToys has brought us tools to copy text from images, search OneNote, or unlock locked files. Version 0.67 bridges the wait for new tools, more on that later. At the same time, she finally adds a menu through which you can easily access the tools.
When you tap an icon in the notification area once, it doesn’t open the main window, you’d have to double-tap that, but a small space with icons representing sub-tools. The menu is not customizable in any way, so you have to settle with the given selection.
Because we live in Microsoft’s world, it looks modern, but ignores the dark theme of the display in Windows 11. Those aspects would like to work on it until next time, but you can launch specific tools through the menu and quickly and completely enable or disable sub-tools, which I consider a not insignificant step in the right direction.
The menu contains selected tools, but is not customizable
Why we don’t find e.g. Awake in it, which instead occupies one position in the notification area, is not clear. Maybe next time. You will notice other news in the Run launcher, where you can switch between the results move the Tab key.
Otherwise, this time the code was mainly fixed to make it more stable. As of last, the PowerToys toolkit contains separate .NET 7 libraries that it requires to run. Therefore, you do not need to install them together with the program.
The upcoming version 0.68 will be interesting, because Microsoft is preparing the possibility of installation on ordinary accounts without administrative rights. Above all, it will enrich the set with two tools. One will display a preview of the selected file on demand, while the other will allow quick insertion of unformatted text with a keyboard shortcut, which some programs, including Word, still cannot do. We would really appreciate the universally functional Ctrl+Shift+V.
You no longer need to visit the main window to (de)activate tools
You will find PowerToys in Stor a on Github. The development team prefers a traditional installer.
Resources: PowerToys / GitHub
