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Microsoft PowerToys is a collection of utilities that supercharge productivity and customization on Windows

120 mentions on Hacker News by 110 people: 29 stories, 91 comments · first 2019-05-07 · latest 2026-05-13

Mentions per year 120 mentions · busiest year 2020 (30)
20082026
  1. …pretty decent. Have a look at first-party programs like PowerToys[1], or Windows Terminal[2]. [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys [2]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
    comment by delta_p_delta_x · 2026-05-13 · in Zero-native – Build native desktop apps with web UI
  2. Oh my gosh they actually did! https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/pull/47024 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/powertoys/grab-and...
    comment by c-hendricks · 2026-05-12 · in Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
  3. …is a set of first party customization utilities, one of which is a pretty nice keyboard remapper. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
    comment by canthonytucci · 2026-05-04 · in Why TUIs are back
  4. No surprise. Microsoft PowerToys took 4 years to implement "select UI language" feature. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/7670
    comment by falldrown · 2026-03-21 · in Our commitment to Windows quality
  5. …as a single key (i.e. Ctrl), only what the shortcut associated to it does (Shift+Win+F23 IIRC). https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/35808
  6. …text properly are not prioritized by the OS vendors (one of the many ignored Windows issues https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595 ) while a lot of effort is wasted on stuff users dislike
    comment by eviks · 2026-01-10 · in OLED, Not for Me
  7. ▲ 2
    PowerToys has detected an app Always On Top message · Issue #30973
    story by stareatgoats · 2025-10-09 · 0 comments
  8. it's hard to compete with other launchers like: - Microsoft PowerToys Run https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys - Keypirinha https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha - Flow Launcher https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher If they…
  9. …for File Hash checks, e.g. for downloads. Hopefully it won't be too much longer until this lands: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/57#issuecommen... I found OpenHashTab to be a good tool for this in the meantime:…
    comment by snthpy · 2025-09-11 · in Microsoft PowerToys
  10. Powertoys has had some weird bugs over the years: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/410 I can't find it now, but I think it also used to crash outlook if you put mailto: links in emails.
    comment by gadders · 2025-09-10 · in Microsoft PowerToys
  11. ▲ 135
    Show HN: Inspect and extract files from MSI installers directly in your browser
    story by rmast · 2025-06-20 · 24 comments
  12. ▲ 3
    The Windows efficiency toolkit open-sourced by Microsoft
    story by wushi · 2025-05-21 · 1 comment
  13. Windows OCR is used by PowerToys. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  14. ▲ 10
    PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity
    story by keepamovin · 2025-05-03 · 2 comments
  15. …Spotlight / Alfred on macOS (not an application launcher ). Bug report has been open for years: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/5962
    comment by vladde · 2025-04-02 · in PowerToys Command Palette Utility
  16. …an extension: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/command-... Release notes: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.90.0
    comment by sangeeth96 · 2025-04-01 · in PowerToys Command Palette Utility
  17. …[1] https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype [2] https://github.com/bp2008/BetterClearTypeTuner [3] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595
    comment by SquareWheel · 2025-03-19 · in Memory safety for web fonts
  18. ... or Microsoft PowerToys: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  19. …reign and a fresh start, the software is just agonizingly slow and buggy. An example: new PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/ The FancyZones "window snap" UI takes upwards of half a second to activate when dragging a window…
    comment by thworp · 2025-03-04 · in Apple's Software Quality Crisis
  20. …the superior display technology, but cannot be used for productivity because of this issue. [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595
  21. …following a relevant issue [0] in PowerToys, but so far, no perfect solution has surfaced yet. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/269
  22. Yeah think its a ClearType issue[0] specifically then [0] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595
  23. It's active again, they've open sourced and reinvested in it with new utilities. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
    comment by add-sub-mul-div · 2024-10-30 · in Show HN: Supercharge Your Mac
  24. +1 for power toys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys also, Cygwin if you need it
  25. Obligatory FancyZones/PowerToys links if Komorebi doesn't suit your style: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys?tab=readme-ov-file https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... FancyZones is a Microsoft tiling window…
  26. …should try the powertools OCR tool. Which is open source (MIT-licensed), the source code is here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/main/src/modules... It is written in C#, and uses the Windows.Media.Ocr UWP API to do the actual…
    comment by skissane · 2024-06-24 · in Llama.ttf: A font which is also an LLM
  27. …includes an OCR tool: https://aka.ms/PowerToysOverview_TextExtractor Source available here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/main/src/modules... (like ShareX, uses Windows built-in OCR engine:…
    comment by meinersbur · 2024-06-02 · in OCR Tools for Mac, iOS and Windows
  28. …which is open source. - Screenshot + OCR is almost certainly Microsoft Powertoys Text Extractor ( https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys ) - The DB is sqlite but the system is probably just kernel-memory which is a local .NET application:…
  29. …tool, but I personally find the one keyboard shortcut in PowerToys more pleasant to use). [0] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  30. …and how important they can be. Here is one example of a GitHub issue that was closed as "wontfix": https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/13860 You can fix this by changing the "activation shortcut" for Run in the PowerToys…
  31. …recent work. This is great work btw. [0]: https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype/issues/932 [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595 [2]: https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/reference/ft2-lcd_render...
    comment by boomskats · 2024-03-07 · in Fractional scales, fonts and hinting
  32. …so this is helpful: https://learn.microsoft.com/da-dk/windows/powertoys/shortcut... From PowerToys: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys (Which also have the (in this context) useful FancyZones)
  33. …VirusTotal https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/709834b0e003b6bb546cf16e... 9. Get [PowerToys]( https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys ) 10. Use Devbox for containered environment https://www.jetpack.io/devbox 11. Dual-Booting Linux and…
    comment by meatjuice · 2024-02-24 · in Ask HN: Cleanest way to manage Windows OS?
  34. …look to one side. [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... [2]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
    comment by btschaegg · 2024-02-09 · in Ask HN: Best Hacks for a Ultrawide Monitor?
  35. Powertoys got a significant update for foreign users just 4 days ago. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases
  36. Powertoys Run ( https://github.com/microsoft/powertoys ) can do this. There are not that many plugins as Alfred but Window Switcher is built-in.
  37. …between Windows PCs, there is Mouse Without Borders. It's included in PowerToys nowadays. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  38. …Windows PowerToys. Links: - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/profiles/mouse-without-borders - https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
    comment by vs4vijay · 2023-12-27 · in DeskHop – Fast Desktop Switching
  39. PowerToys is nice: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  40. …setting it also disables telemetry for PowerToys [0], I agree it's not ideal it's not hard. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/11873#issuecom...
    comment by sequence7 · 2023-11-23 · in Fluent Search
  41. …when we're talking about quick messages (which is what your most likely to write on mobile) [0]: https://github.com/microsoft/powertoys
  42. ▲ 3
    Microsoft PowerToys: utilities for tuning and streamlining Windows experience
    story by vissidarte_choi · 2023-11-03 · 1 comment
  43. ▲ 2
    PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity
    story by thunderbong · 2023-10-30 · 0 comments
  44. ▲ 1
    Powertoys bug #2701: [New setting] Check for updates automatically (on/off)
    story by snvzz · 2023-10-01 · 0 comments
  45. …and Escape send both of the keys. So I'm stuck occasionally messing up my Teams messages :) [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys [2]: https://github.com/susam/uncap [3]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38558376/how-to-map-caps...
  46. Windows power toys has a kb remapper https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
  47. If only. There's a ticket open with Microsoft's PowerToys to improve the anti-aliasing situation: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595 And heres an explanation from the dev of MacType about how DirectWrite can cause…
    comment by ziml77 · 2023-06-26 · in Text rendering hates you (2019)
  48. ▲ 4
    A plea to Microsoft: Subpixel text rendering for WRGB stripe and RGB triangular
    story by seepy · 2023-05-29 · 0 comments
  49. ▲ 41
    PowerToys Release 0.70 with Mouse Without Borders and PowerToys Peek
    story by thunderbong · 2023-05-24 · 12 comments
  50. ▲ 2
    PowerToys Quick Accent adds the ability to type en and em dashes
    story by LoganDark · 2023-02-09 · 1 comment