Release v0.69.0

In the v0.69 release cycle, we focused on new features, stability and improvements. Early notice for v0.70, we will be releasing it later in May 2023.

Installer Hashes

Per user - x64 Installer Hash - PowerToysUserSetup-0.69.0-x64.exe

D05FC31F137718516C1D792765AAFEC51551FC172064BC3EE170911E455053AC

Per user - ARM64 Installer Hash - PowerToysUserSetup-0.69.0-arm64.exe

0B113EAF17EEEA86299DEF7F73E7AF15A9CBFB8033C7F9218E33BDA276F37727

Machine wide - x64 Installer Hash - PowerToysSetup-0.69.0-x64.exe

ADE1E56DF8CC52839FBD9DB6A0BCF34E38B88AAA52544EEAD3C1BB023FDAF29A

Machine wide - ARM64 Installer Hash - PowerToysSetup-0.69.0-arm64.exe

CF13F75F93462BE68CA3E4C90B23F3828BBCAA44E7AA987503E73652DCB9FDF8

Highlights

• New utility: Registry Preview is a utility to visualize and edit Windows Registry files. Thanks @randyrants!
• Support per-user scope installation.
• Awake: Quality-of-life improvements and introduced keeping system awake until expiration time and date. Thanks @dend!
• PowerToys Run: Fix crashing issue caused by thumbnail image loading.

General

• New utility: Registry Preview. Thanks @randyrants!
• Fix issue causing folders to not be removed on uninstall.
• Support per-user scope installation.
  • Companies can control this using the new GPO.

Awake

• Quality-of-life improvements and introduced keeping system awake until expiration time and date. Thanks @dend!

Color Picker

• Fix issue sampling timing and grid issue causing Color Picker to sample the color of its own grid. Thanks @IHorvalds!

FancyZones

• Fix window cycling on multiple monitors issue.

File Locksmith

• Add context menu icon. Thanks @htcfreek!

Mouse Utils

• Mouse Jump - Simulate mouse input event on mouse jump in addition to cursor move.
• Mouse Jump - Improve performance of screenshot generation. Thanks @mikeclayton!

Paste as Plain Text

• Support Ctrl+V as activation shortcut. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Repress modifier keys after plain paste. (This was a hotfix for 0.67) Thanks @UnderKoen!
• Set default shortcut to Ctrl+Win+Alt+V. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Update icons. Thanks @niels9001!

PowerRename

• Show PowerRename in directory background context menu.
• Fix the crash on clicking Select/UnselectAll checkbox while showing only files to be renamed.
• Improve performance on populating Renamed items when many items are being renamed.

PowerToys Run

• Add setting to disable thumbnails generation for files. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Calculator plugin - handle implied multiplication expressions. Thanks @jjavierdguezas!
• Fix Calculator plugin unit tests to respect decimal separator locale. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fix crashing caused by thumbnail image loading.
• Date & Time plugin - Add filename-compatible date & time format. Thanks @Picazsoo!
• Improved the error message shown on plugin loading error. Thanks @htcfreek!

Quick Accent

• Fix existing and add missing Hebrew and Pinyin characters. Thanks @stevenlele!

Registry Preview

• Added a new utility: Registry Preview.
• Thanks @htcfreek! for the help shipping this utility!
• Thanks @niels9001 for the help on the UI!

Video Conference Mute

• Add toolbar DPI scaling support.
• Fix selecting overlay image when Settings app is running elevated.
• Add push-to-talk (and push-to-reverse) feature. Thanks @pajawojciech!

Settings

• Fix Experiment bitmap icon rendering on theme change and bump CommunityToolkit.Labs.WinUI.SettingsControls package version. Thanks @niels9001!
• Video Conference Mute page improvements. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Add warning that PowerToys Run might get no focus if "Use centralized keyboard hook" settings is enabled. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Fix ShortcutControl issues related to keyboard input focus, theme change and missing error badge when invalid key is pressed. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Add warning when Ctrl+V and Ctrl+Shift+V is used as an activation shortcut for Paste as Plain Text. Thanks @htcfreek!

Documentation

• Update CONTRIBUTING.md with information about localization issues. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Remove localization from URLs. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Add dev docs for tools. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!

Development

• Ignore spellcheck for MouseJumpUI/MainForm.resx file. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Optimize versionAndSignCheck.ps1 script. Thanks @snickler!
• Upgraded NetAnalyzers to 7.0.1. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Move all DLL imports in Settings project to NativeMethods.cs file.
• Fix FancyZones tools build issues. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Centralize Logger used in C# projects. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Add missing project references. Thanks @ACGNnsj!

Release v0.68.1

This is a patch release to fix issues in v.068.0 to fix some bugs we deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.68.0 for full release notes.

• #24446 - Support Ctrl+V as activation shortcut for Paste As Plain Text, as requested by some users. Warning: Overriding a default system shortcut might have unintended consequences.
• #24437 - Paste As Plain Text - Support pasting multiple times as Ctrl+V does (on pressing activation key while holding modification keys)
• #24491 - Set Paste As Plain Text default shortcut to Ctrl+Win+Alt+V to avoid conflicting with new Windows volume mixer shortcut.
• #24600 - Add PowerToys Run setting to disable thumbnails generation for files in order to narrow down the root cause of the crash.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

ECBEED67EFA864E558403F719B7FFD6F0192E77C36579B2FF9C2A0B6DD305752

ARM64 Installer Hash

3F568BF24E78D855B529D25CAB510A2589B8371D76B5BE3BCEBBD4C7B9043D99

Release v0.68.0

In the v0.68 release cycle, we focused on releasing new features and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

44E4441EAB29D9FB9B5FD3EC4BAA63F8D425C8AC9622FAA432B17C1216FF64ED

ARM64 Installer Hash

59D4AE125F7B8E937B4E68786107DF0C479D107BEDEF8B0434C7A28969F86FC0

Highlights

• New utility: Paste as Plain Text allows pasting the text contents of your clipboard without formatting. Note: the formatted text in the clipboard is replaced with the unformatted text. Thanks @carlos-zamora!
• New utility: Mouse Jump allows to quickly move the mouse pointer long distances on a single screen or across multiple screens. Thanks @mikeclayton!
• Add new GPO policies for automatic update downloads and update toast notifications. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Support MSC and CPL files in "Run command" results of PowerToys Run Program plugin. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Add support for log2 and log10 in PowerToys Run Calculator plugin. Thanks @RickLuiken!
• Added experimentation to PowerToys first run experience. There are current page which says "welcome" and a variant with direct instructions on how to use some of the utilities. We want to see if directly showing how to use PowerToys leads to more people using the features :)

General

• Improve metered network detection in runner. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Update PowerToys logo used by installer. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!
• Add new GPO policies for automatic update downloads and update toast notifications. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Update copyright year to 2023. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!

FancyZones

• Refactored and improved code quality.
• Fix crashing on moving window between monitors with Win + arrows. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Fix issue causing window attributes to not be reset properly. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Fix issue causing window to not be adjusted when layout is changed. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Fix issue causing window not to be unsnapped on drag started. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Fix issue causing layouts not to be applied to new virtual desktops. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Fix issues causing windows not to be restored correctly to their last known zone.

File explorer add-ons

• Add Developer files previewer option to set max file size and fix styling issue. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Improve Developer files previewer exception handling and printing of error messages.
• Fix crash when generating PDF and Gcode file thumbnails. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)

Hosts file editor

• Improve hosts file loading. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Improved duplicate hosts finding. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Keyboard Manager

• Fix typo in Keyboard Manager Editor. Thanks @ChristianLW!

Mouse Utils

• Resolve grammatical error in Mouse Highlighter description. Thanks @WordlessSafe1!
• New utility: Mouse Jump allows to quickly move the mouse pointer long distances on single or across screens. Thanks @mikeclayton!

Paste as Plain Text

• New utility: Paste as Plain Text allows pasting the text contents of your clipboard without formatting. Note: the formatted text in the clipboard is replaced with the unformatted text. Thanks @carlos-zamora!

PowerToys Run

• Show Steam (steam://open/) shortcuts in the Program plugin.
• Localize paths of Program plugin results. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Improved stability of the code used to get the localized names and paths. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Support MSC and CPL files in "Run command" results of Program plugin. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Added missing MSC and CPL settings to the results of Windows Settings plugin. Thanks @htcfreek!
• System plugin: Setting for separate "Open/Empty Recycle bin" results or single result with context menu. (This was implemented based on user feedback for a change in the last build.) Thanks @htcfreek!
• Add support for log2 and log10 in Calculator plugin. Thanks @RickLuiken!
• Removed the TimeZone plugin.
• Fix the crash when loading thumbnail for PDF files. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)

Shortcut Guide

• Added: Dismiss Shortcut Guide with mouse click. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Quick Accent

• Added Lithuanian characters. Thanks @saulens22!
• Added additional (Chinese) characters. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!

Settings

• Add missing flyout borders on Windows 10. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Add experimentation for oobe landing page. Thanks @chenss3!
• Show icons of user-installed PowerToys Run plugins. Thanks @al2me6!
• Fixed crash when clicking Browse for backup and restore location while running elevated.
• Respect taskbar position when showing system tray flyout. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)
• Show correct Hosts module image. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)

Development

• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• Centralize .NET NuGet packages versions. Thanks @snickler!
• Separate PowerToys installer logs and MSI logs to different files.
• Added new GPO rules to the reporting tool.
• Move PowerToys registry entries back to HKLM to fix context menu entries not working on some configurations. (This was a hotfix for 0.67)

Release v0.67.1

This is a patch release to fix issues in v.67.0 to fix some bugs we deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.67.0 for full release notes.

• #23733 - Fix FancyZones crashing on moving window between monitors with win + arrows
• #23818 - Fix FancyZones issue causing window attributes not being reset properly
• #23749 - Move PowerToys registry entries back to HKLM to fix context menu entries not working on some configurations
• #23737 - Respect taskbar position when showing system tray flyout
• #18166 - Fix Power Toys Run crashing when loading thumbnail for PDF files
• #23801 - Show correct Hosts module image in PowerToys Settings app
• #23820 - Fix FancyZones issue causing window not being adjusted when layout is changed
• #23926 - Fix an issue causing issues not to be unsnapped when dragging started
• #23927 - Fix layouts not being applied to new virtual desktops
• #23579, #23811 - Fix for thumbnail crashes

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

A5AD6BCA1DF8A9399A56334A96CCF49B1E55005B369493B2081388AE7BDC1FB4

ARM64 Installer Hash

E6F4E41C4B35B2F1F9262E4D954254D64769D68BDDFDDEC67B5626E58DCE3842

Release v0.67.0

In the v0.67 release cycle, we focused on releasing new features and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

F653DEC43F4CE09F3C14C682BA18E3A18D34D2A2244ECBFDF3A879897A237383

ARM64 Installer Hash

80CA4B9DE6B34E214F9E3F5063086E161608193FACA15CB24924660F818C4400

Highlights

• Added an option for PowerToys Run to tab through results instead of context buttons. Thanks @maws6502!
• All PowerToys registry entries are moved from machine scope (HKLM) to user scope (HKCU).
• Quick access system tray launcher. Thanks @niels9001!

Awake

• Disable instead of hiding "Keep screen on" option.

FancyZones

• Refactored and improved code quality.

File explorer add-ons

• Fixed escaping HTML-sensitive characters when previewing developer files. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Image Resizer

• Improved code quality around a silent crash that was being reported to Microsoft servers.

PowerToys Run

• Add option to tab through results only. Thanks @maws6502!
• System plugin - Updated Recycle Bin command to allow opening the Recycle Bin. Thanks @htcfreek!
• System plugin - Improved Recycle Bin command to not block PT Run while the deletion is running. Thanks @htcfreek!
• System plugin - Small other changes to improve the usability of the Recycle Bin command. Thanks @htcfreek!
• WindowWalker plugin - Show all open windows with action keyword. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Quick Accent

• Added dashes characters. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Added Estonian characters. Thanks @jovark!
• Added Hebrew characters. Thanks @Evyatar-E!
• Added diacritical marks. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Added Norwegian characters. Thanks @norwayman22!

Settings

• Fixed URL click crash on the "What's New" screen.
• Added quick access system tray launcher. Thanks @niels9001!

Documentation

• Added PowerToys disk usage footprint document.
• Fixed some grammar issues on main readme / Wiki. Thanks @CanePlayz!

Development

• Verify notice.md file and used NuGet packages are synced.
• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• Automatically add list of .NET Runtime deps to Installer during build. Thanks @snickler!
• Move all installer registry entries to HKCU.
• Refactor installer - extract module related stuff from Product.wxs to per-module .wxs file.
• Enhance ARM64 build configuration verification. Thanks @snickler!
• Helped identify a WebView2 issue affecting PowerToys File explorer add-ons, which has been fixed upstream and released as an update through the usual Windows Update channels.

Release v0.66.0

In the v0.66 release cycle, we focused on stability and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

EE3F76F056A0611F69A203BA6D2B36FF81014B1FA29D1F46ECDCC6D312724FC6

ARM64 Installer Hash

19DA79D497CAD28CC80A9C9954459EE93FE23FFC560DE7732DD806A38E862210

Highlights

• PowerToy utilities now ship with self-contained .NET 7, meaning it's not necessary to install .NET as part of the installer and it's easier to keep up to date.
• It's possible to pick which of the installed OCR languages is used by Text Extractor by selecting it in the right-click context menu.
• Added a setting to sort the order of the accented characters by usage frequency in Quick Accent.

General

• Reduced resource consumption caused by logging. A thread for each logger was being created even for disabled utilities.
• The .NET 7 dependency is now shipped self-contained within the utilities, using deep links to reduce storage space usage.

Color Picker

• Fixed an issue where the custom color formats were not working when picking colors without using the editor.
• Fixed a crash when using duplicated names for color formats.
• Added two decimal formats, to distinguish between RGB and BGR.
• Fixed color name localization, which was not working correctly on 0.65.

FancyZones

• Fixed an editor crash caused by deleting a zone while trying to move it.
• Reduce the time it takes the tooltip for layout shortcut setting to appear in the editor.

File Locksmith

• Fixed an issue causing File Locksmith to hang when looking for open handles in some machines.

Hosts File Editor

• Added a warning when duplicated entries are detected. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

PowerToys Run

• Support drag and dropping for file results. Thanks @daniel-richter!

Quick Accent

• Added support for dark theme. Thanks @niels9001!
• Increased default input delay to improve out of the box experience.
• Fixed a bug causing the first character to not be selected when opening the overlay. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fixed the positioning of the overlay when showing near the horizontal edges of the screen.
• Added additional Pinyin characters. Thanks @char-46!
• Added Macedonian characters. Thanks @ad-mca-mk!
• Added a setting to sort characters by usage frequency.
• Added a setting to always start selection in the first character, even when using the arrow keys as the activation method.

Settings

• Fixed an error that hid the option to keep the display on when using the "Indefinitely Awake" mode.
• Fixed an accessibility issue causing the navigation bar to not work with narrator in scan mode.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where the name for the shortcut control was not being read correctly.
• Tweaked the Color Picker custom color format UI. Thanks @niels9001!
• Improved the shortcut control visibility and accessibility. Thanks @niels9001!
• Fixed an issue causing the Settings to not be saved correctly on scenarios where the admin user would be different then the user running PowerToys.
• Added a setting to pick which language should be used by default when using Text Extractor.

Text Extractor

• Improve behavior for CJK languages by not adding spaces for some characters that don't need them. Thanks @AO2233!
• OCR language can now be picked in the right-click context menu.

Video Conference Mute

• Reduced resource consumption by not starting the File Watchers when the utility is disabled.

Documentation

• Updated the development setup documentation.
• Improved the Markdown documentation lists numbering in many docs. Thanks @sanidhyas3s!

Development

• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• C++ code analysis no longer runs on release CI to speed up building release candidates. It still runs on GitHub CI and when building locally to maintain code quality.
• Cleaned up "to-do" comments referring to disposing memory on C#. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Added a fabric bot rule for localization issues.
• Fixed a CI build error after a .NET tools update.
• Update the Windows App SDK dependency version to 1.2.
• When building for arm64, the arm64 build tools are now preferred when building on an arm64 device. Thanks @snickler!
• Updated the C# test framework and removed unused Newtonsoft.Json package references.
• Updated StyleCop and fixed/enabled more warnings. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fixed a language typo in the code. Thanks @eltociear!
• Improved code quality around some silent crashes that were being reported to Microsoft servers.
• Moved the GPO asset files to source instead of docs in the repo.
• Upgraded the unit test NuGet packages.

Release v0.65.0

In the v0.65 release cycle, we focused on stability and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

8151675EE508CD3C91DF3088C52192C58080A15A4EDF958ADA99EBDA19C31CF1

ARM64 Installer Hash

8780CF5E82F21BAAF3234F630A89175782A26D22EB7E32FD23F78FB3E4C336A2

Highlights

• The codebase was upgraded to work with .NET 7. Thanks @snickler!
• Quick Accent can now show a description of the selected character. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• ColorPicker now supports adding custom formats.

Known issues

• The Text Extractor utility fails to recognize text in some cases on ARM64 devices running Windows 10.
• After installing PowerToys, the new Windows 11 context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer might not appear before a system restart.
• There are reports of users who are unable to open the Settings window. This is being caused by incompatibilities with some applications (RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server is a known examples of this). If you're affected by this, please check the linked issue to verify if any of the presented solutions works for you.

General

• Downgraded the ModernWPF dependency to 0.9.4 to avoid issues on certain virtualization technologies. (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Upgraded and fixed the code to work with .NET 7. Thanks @snickler!

Always on Top

• Added telemetry for the pinning/unpinning events.

Awake

• Added telemetry.
• Removed exiting Awake from the tray icon when starting from the runner. Utilities started from the runner should be disabled in the Settings to avoid discrepancies.

Color Picker

• Fixed an infinite loop due to a looping UI refresh. (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Added a feature to allow users to create their own color formats.

FancyZones

• Fixed an issue that caused turning off spaces between zones to not apply correctly. (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Prevent the shift key press from trickling down to the focused window. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fixed a bug causing FancyZones to try resizing hidden windows.
• Fixed the focus layout preview being empty on first run in the editor.
• Fixed UI margin in the "Create new layout" dialog.
• Fixed window positioning issues when switching between virtual desktops.
• Fixed snapping by hotkey in single zone layouts.

File explorer add-ons

• Added .log file support to the Monaco preview handler. Thanks @Eagle3386!

File Locksmith

• Query system and other users processes when elevated. (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Icon and UI fixes. Thanks @niels9001! (This was a hotfix for 0.64)

Group Policy Objects

• Removed a obsolete dependency from the admx file to fix importing on Intune. Thanks @htcfreek! (This was a hotfix for 0.64)

Hosts File Editor

• Added a scrollbar to the additional lines dialog. Thanks @davidegiacometti! (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Updated the plus icon. Thanks @niels9001! (This was a hotfix for 0.64)
• Prevent the new entry content dialog from overlapping the title bar.
• Updated the name for the additional lines feature. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Added a workaround for an issue causing the context menu not opening on right-click. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Image Resizer

• Fixed a silent crash when trying to show the tier 1 context menu on Windows 11.

PowerToys Run

• Added pinyin support to the search. Thanks @frg2089!
• Fixed an error in the TimeZone plugin preventing searching for standard time zones. Thanks @Tantalus13A98B5F!
• Added the English abbreviations as fallbacks in the UnitConverter plugin. Thanks @Tantalus13A98B5F!

Quick Accent

• Added mappings for the mu, omicron, upsilon and thorn characters.
• Added a setting to exclude apps from activating Quick Accent.
• Fixed an issue causing the selector to trigger when leaving the lock screen. Thanks @damienleroy!
• Added the Croatian, Netherlands, Swedish and Welsh character sets. Thanks @damienleroy!
• Added support for more unicode characters. Thanks @char-46!
• Shift-space can now navigate backwards in the selector. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Added the Catalan accented characters. Thanks @ivocarbajo and @codingneko!
• Added the Kurdish accented characters.
• Added the Serbian accented characters. Thanks @damienleroy!
• Added the Irish and Scottish accented characters.
• Added the description for the currently selected character in the selector.
• Fixed a bug causing the selector window to appear blank.

Runner

• Fixed a crash on a racing condition accessing the IPC communication with Settings.

Settings

• Fixed settings name in the QuickAccent page. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Added a message indicating there's no network available when looking for updates.
• Fixed an error causing the backup/restore feature to not find the backup file. Thanks @jefflord!
• Fixed localization for the "All apps" expression in the keyboard manager page.
• UI refactoring, clean-up and bringing in modern controls. Thanks @niels9001!
• Improved settings/OOBE screens text. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• The backup/restore feature also backs up FancyZones layouts.

Shortcut Guide

• Added a setting to make the shortcuts and taskbar icons have different configurable response times. Thanks @OkamiWong!

Video Conference Mute

• Changed the warning about deprecating Video Conference Mute to saying it's going to go into legacy mode, thanks to community feedback. (This was a hotfix for 0.64)

Documentation

• Added the core team to COMMUNITY.md

Development

• Fixed some errors in the GitHub issue templates. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Updated the Windows implementation library. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Added Hosts File Editor to the issue templates. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• Cleaned up unused dependencies. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fixed building on the latest MSVC.
• Fixed multi-processor build on the latest MSBuild.
• Added a message to suggest the feedback hub to the fabric bot triggers.
• Optimized every png file with the zopfli algorithm. Thanks @pea-sys!
• Updated the .vsconfig file for a quicker development setup. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!
• Fixed a language typo in the code. Thanks @eltociear!
• Fixed wrong x86 target in the solution file.
• Added a script to fail building when the nuget packages aren't consolidated. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Upgraded the Vanara.Invoke dependencies.
• Upgraded and brought back the spell-checker. Thanks @jsoref!
• Added a new dependencies feed and fixed release CI. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!

Release v0.64.1

This is a patch release to fix issues in v.64.0 to fix some bugs we deemed important for stability based on incoming rates. See v0.64.0 for full release notes.

• #21630 - Actually apply the 'space around zones' toggle deactivation in FancyZones Editor.
• #21619 - Add a scrollbar to the additional lines dialog in Hosts File Editor.
• #21661 - Allow File Locksmith to recognize processes from the system user when elevated.
• #21473 - Instead of deprecating VCM, it's going into legacy mode instead, based on community feedback.
• #21462 - Avoid an infinite loop when updating settings in Color Picker.
• #21833 - Fix icons in Hosts File Editor.
• #21813 - Remove an unused namespace from the GPO admx file so that it can be imported by Intune.
• #21732 - Icon and UI fixes for File Locksmith.
• #21746 - Fixed an issue causing FancyZones Editor and other ModernWPF applications to render as a white window on VMWare Windows 11 guests.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

0110EE62579462D509086D50F65EA44196F52624B08CDC8C9E1CBB8A7FFD4F35

ARM64 Installer Hash

DEE28FE7C7D59C301861375C1DBA47B41865653D1F34262E4C5A7A30A0051F39

Release v0.64.0

In the v0.64 release cycle, we focused on releasing new features and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

5BAFC1EF4683F83C16D0FCE6BA11F97A9B6E9C12732B07FF8480F2D47F72C44E

ARM64 Installer Hash

D3F225D00A748E94A5BC09C21CE6ED3A1B1F0DC5E1D6FE1870F82A0154B0772C

Highlights

• New utility: File Locksmith allows seeing which processes are currently using the selected files.
• New utility: Hosts File Editor allows you to edit your hosts file in an Editor UI. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Settings has a new feature for backing up / restoring the settings from a file. Thanks @jefflord!
• FancyZones allows you to set defaults for horizontal/vertical screens to get better intended behavior for new screens and cases where a monitor ID resets.
• PowerToys ships with Group Policy Objects settings for force disabling and enabling PowerToys utilities in organizations. Check the GPO docs for more details.
• Added a warning about deprecating Video Conference Mute in the future (v0.67), please check #21473 for more information.

Known issues

• The Text Extractor utility fails to recognize text in some cases on ARM64 devices running Windows 10.
• After installing PowerToys, the new Windows 11 context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer might not appear before a system restart.
• There are reports of users who are unable to open the Settings window. This is being caused by incompatibilities with some applications (RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server is a known examples of this). If you're affected by this, please check the linked issue to verify if any of the presented solutions works for you.

Always on Top

• Detect and put a window on top again if it's no longer on top.

Color Picker

• Added the hexadecimal integer format. Thanks @marius-bughiu!

FancyZones

• Added a way for users to configure default layouts for horizontal and vertical screens.
• Replaced remaining Number Boxes in FancyZones Editor with Sliders, to improve accessibility for screen readers.
• Fixed an issue breaking window switching shortcuts.

File Locksmith

• Added a new utility: File Locksmith.
• Thanks @niels9001 for the design on the UI!

Group Policy Objects

• Group Policy Objects settings for force disabling and enabling PowerToys utilities.
• Thanks @htcfreek for your help in reviewing to make sure the shipped settings conform to system administrators expectations!

Hosts File Editor

• Added a new utility: Hosts File Editor. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Thanks @niels9001 for the design help on the UI!
• Thanks @davidegiacometti for fixing the bugs found and adding features up until release!
• Thanks @AtariDreams for consolidating the packages comparing to the rest of the project!
• Thanks @htcfreek for adding a scrollviewer to the entry editor!

Keyboard Manager

• Fixed a delay that was not being cancelled properly. Thanks @AtariDreams!

Mouse Utilities

• Changed the opacity setting to the 1-100 range. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

PowerToys Run

• Changed image loading to release the images in PowerToys Run main executable. This is a try to fix the "app.dark.png" missing issues received after a PowerToys update.
• Fixed the PowerToys Run hiding after the default action failed. Thanks @hlaueriksson!
• Fixed the PowerToys Run allows showing after a context menu action succeeded. Thanks @hlaueriksson!

Quick Accent

• Corrected "Dutch" word to "German". Thanks @damienleroy!
• Added the Portuguese language accents. Thanks @pcanavar!
• Fixed positioning of toolbar on scaled desktops.

Screen Ruler

• Improved the acrylic brush used in the menu. Thanks @niels9001!

Settings

• Added a feature to backup/restore settings to/from a file. Thanks @jefflord!
• Fixed an issue causing shortcuts shown in OOBE not updating to new values when the window was re-opened.
• Fixed the "Documents" folder usage in the backup/restore feature. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Text Extractor

• Added a warning about how to install languages for OCR recognition.
• Fixed the overlay not focusing after the first activation.
• Added spaces between CJK and non-CKJ words. Thanks @maggch97!

Video Conference Mute

• Added a setting to hide the Video Conference Mute overlay when muted. Thanks @akabhirav!
• Added a warning about deprecating Video Conference Mute in the future (v0.67), please check #21473 for more information.

Installer

• Added some missing files that were causing Settings and PowerRename to not function correctly on some configurations.
• Updated the .NET dependency to 6.0.10.

Development

• Consolidated nuget packages and removed a few unused packages.
• Updated the Windows.CppRT to the latest version. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Removed the cxxopts dependency, which was no longer used. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Updated the cziplob dependency to 0.25. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Updated the System.IO.Abstractions dependency. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• Added the install method to the issue template on GitHub, since some issues seem to be related to specific installation methods.
• Automated installer hash creation in the release CI.
• Simplified use of .First() on ImageResizer. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Improved and clarified the issues templates. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Fixed a PTRun unit test to be more compatible with .NET 6. Thanks @AtariDreams!

Release v0.63.0

In the v0.63 release cycle, we focused on stability and improvement.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

D9E5CAE050E6CB54F672C2F13DCEB753B6FF1047D7286E0A98BAA95DF0AFFFF7

ARM64 Installer Hash

028E0C055C0A8CDFFFE61E4A0389A575B5D2FA0007005AA364C16138C7A183E8

Highlights

• QuickAccent contains a new setting to select a language. This should reduce the number of accented characters a user needs to pick from. Thanks @damienleroy!
• Reduced installer (125 MB in 0.62.1 compared to 83 MB in 0.63.0) and installed (817 MB in 0.62.1 compared to 587 MB in 0.63.0) sizes by sharing the Windows App SDK, VC++ redistributable and PowerToys Interop runtime files between utilities. This is a step towards removing the UAC requirement on install. The next step is shipping .NET self-contained and shared between utilities.

Known issues

• The Text Extractor utility fails to recognize text in some cases on ARM64 devices running Windows 10.
• After installing PowerToys, the new Windows 11 context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer might not appear before a system restart.
• There are reports of users who are unable to open the Settings window. This is being caused by incompatibilities with some applications (RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server and MSI AfterBurner are known examples of this). If you're affected by this, please check the linked issue to verify if any of the presented solutions works for you.

General

• Fixed an issue that caused bug report generation to fail. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Updated the Windows App SDK runtimes to 1.1.5.

Always on Top

• Fixed an issue causing the border to linger when moving a window between virtual desktops.
• The minimum thickness for the borders is now 1. Thanks @unuing!
• Borders were showing in Virtual Desktop thumbnails. These were removed.
• Corrected the borders visuals to more closely follow the application borders.

Awake

• Fixed utility exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)

Color Picker

• Fixed utility exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Fixed initialization error that caused the mouse position to be incorrectly set.

FancyZones

• Fixed FancyZones Editor exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)

File explorer add-ons

• Updated the WebView 2 dependency to 1.0.1343.22. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Fixed preview of .reg files.

Image Resizer

• Fixed a bug causing File Explorer to crash under some conditions when accessing the context menu.

PowerToys Run

• Added support to opening Terminal windows in quake mode. Thanks @FWest98!
• Fixed utility exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Improve the icon shown in the Program plugin for application execution aliases. Thanks @MikeBarker-MSFT!
• Fix calls to the default browser when Firefox is installed from the Microsoft Store.
• Fixed accessibility issue in which controls appended to the result entries weren't announced.
• Search was improved and should now return results where the terms in the query appear at the end of the result.

Quick Accent

• Improved the keyboard hooks performance. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Fixed a bug that was causing Quick Accent to interfere with Keyboard Manager. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Added the correct ß uppercase character. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Accent character selection should now wrap around. Thanks @wmentha!
• Added language selection setting to reduce the number of accented characters shown. The available languages are Currency, Czech, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Maori, Pinyin, Polish, Romanian, Slovakian, Spanish and Turkish. Thanks @damienleroy!

Screen Ruler

• Improved UI/UX and settings descriptions.
• Fixed utility exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)

Settings

• UI icons updated. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Descriptions improvement and disambiguation. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Fixed checkbox margins and other design tweaks. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!

Text Extractor

• Removed extra spaces when recognizing Chinese, Japanese or Korean languages. Thanks @TheJoeFin!
• Fixed utility exit logic to close all threads and avoid crashes. (This was a hotfix for 0.62)
• Fixed an issue where a selection would start on right-click.

Installer

• Added logic to exit PowerToys on upgrade before trying to update .NET.
• Updated the .NET dependency to 6.0.9.
• Added clearer installation step names for the bootstrapper. Thanks @htcfreek and @Jay-o-Way!
• Windows App SDK, VC++ redistributable and PowerToys Interop runtime files are now shared between utilities through hardlinks, reducing installation size.

Documentation

• Fixed typos in Keyboard Manager documentation. Thanks @eltociear!
• Replaced docs.microsoft.com links with learn.microsoft.com. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!

Development

• Fixed a build error that was restricting developers to switch between configuration without first cleaning local build files.
• C++ exception catches were corrected to be caught by reference to avoid unnecessary copy operations. Thanks @NN---!
• General C# code clean up, format fixing and removal of unused code analysis suppressions.
• Removed unnecessary muxc prefix from XAML files. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Re-enabled tests on our pipeline that depend on WebView2.
• Windows 11 tier 1 context menu packages now contain the "Microsoft.PowerToys" prefix.