The latest update for PowerToys, released in December 2024, brings a wave of enhancements that will delight Windows 10 users. Notably, the newly introduced New+ utility is now fully compatible with Windows 10, expanding its usability. In addition, several other utilities have received significant improvements, enhancing the overall user experience.
Update Highlights
The update showcases a variety of new features and improvements:
- Advanced Paste introduces “Advanced AI,” leveraging Semantic Kernel technology to facilitate the orchestration of sequential clipboard transformations.
- Workspaces now supports Progressive Web Applications, enhancing its versatility.
- A new feature in Workspaces allows users to move existing windows rather than creating new ones, streamlining workflow.
- Mouse Jump has added settings for customizing the pop-up appearance, providing users with more control.
- New+ is now operational on Windows 10.
- Quick Accent enables users to select which character sets are displayed in the user interface.
For those interested in the finer details, here’s the complete changelog:
Advanced Paste
- Introduced an optional feature that utilizes AI for orchestrating clipboard transformations.
Awake
- Improvements in initialization, logging, and tray icon setup.
File Explorer Add-ons
- Preview Pane extensions now utilize PerMonitorV2 DPI mode, addressing scaling errors.
Keyboard Manager
- Labels have been added to the IME On and IME Off keys.
- Resolved an issue where the Shift key could become unresponsive when mapped to a numpad key.
Monaco Preview
- Support for .ahk and .ion files as plaintext in Peek and File Explorer add-ons has been added.
- Syntax highlighting for .srt files is now supported in Peek and File Explorer add-ons.
Mouse Jump
- Customization options for the Mouse Jump pop-up UI have been introduced.
New+
- Now compatible with Windows 10.
- Fixed an issue where renaming new files sometimes failed to trigger.
- Updated icons for New+.
Peek
- Peek now assesses local capabilities to determine supported image formats for the Image Previewer.
- Resolved loading issues for the Code Files Previewer under certain conditions.
- Improvements made to logging when loading user settings files.
PowerToys Run
- A scoring function has been added for better ordering of WindowWalker plugin results.
- UUIDv7 support is now included in the ValueGenerator plugin.
- The calculator plugin now accommodates scientific notation with a lowercase ‘e’.
- UI has been ported from WPF-UI to .NET 9 WPF to address “Desktop composition is disabled” crashes.
Quick Accent
- A new setting allows users to choose which character sets to display.
Screen Ruler
- Added an option to display measurements in inches, centimeters, or millimeters.
Settings
- Fixed an issue with milestone links on the “What’s new?” OOBE page.
- Removed unnecessary space from the Welcome page.
- Updated icons in the left navigation bar.
- Addressed accessibility issues on the dashboard page.
Workspaces
- Progressive Web Applications are now supported within Workspaces.
- Implemented a feature to move existing windows rather than creating new ones.
- Fixed a crash related to incorrect encoder parameters when saving Bitmap files in the workspaces editor.
- The position of the workspaces editor is now saved for future sessions.
- Resolved an issue where multiple instances of the same application were incorrectly positioned.
- Improved detection of application versions when multiple versions are installed.
PowerToys can be easily downloaded from the Microsoft Store or GitHub, allowing users to take advantage of these new features and enhancements seamlessly.
