Microsoft Power Toys are famous for their efficiency and simplicity. I always wondered why those functions were not incorporated into Windows by default, but it seems that some tweaking will always be needed.

Currently MS PowerToys include Advanced Paste, Always on Top, PowerToys Awake, Color Picker, Command Not Found, Command Palette, Crop And Lock, Environment Variables, FancyZones, File Explorer Add-ons, File Locksmith, Hosts File Editor, Image Resizer, Keyboard Manager, Mouse utilities, Mouse Without Borders, New+, Paste as Plain Text, Peek, PowerRename, PowerToys Run, Quick Accent, Registry Preview, Screen Ruler, Shortcut Guide, Text Extractor, Workspaces, and ZoomIt.

Of course, we don’t prefer all of us the same utilities, but MS PowerToys have something for all of us. Since the program is free, you have nothing to lose if you download it and see what makes your life easier and what should be just ignored.

Don’t forget to try the keyboard manager, an ms powertoy that lets you assign any key (well, almost any, eg. the fn key won’t change!) to other keys or combinations. For example, I had a keyboard with two Windows keys, one at the left and another one the right side, while I preferred to have at the right side a context key, that opens a different according to where you select to use it. Keyboard manager let me assign this key to Shift+F10, the combination that opens the context menu!

• Download MS PowerToys for Windows