Microsoft’s PowerToys suite is an incredible collection of tools that level up your productivity in a number of ways. Depending on your use case, there are a ton of tools here that will make things easier for you.
Personally, whenever I use a Windows 11 PC, I rely on a few PowerToys tools to make my life that much easier, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that things would take a lot longer if I didn’t have PowerToys in my arsenal. If you’re not using them yet, here are a few PowerToys tools that help me throughout the day, even when I don’t think about it.
Related
The ultimate guide to using PowerToys
Windows may not be perfect, but Microsoft gives you the tools to make the experience better with PowerToys. Here’s everything you need to know.
6
Keyboard Manager
And no, it’s not even for the shortcuts
I’m going to start with a couple of peculiar picks, which you may not relate to, but they do matter to me personally. Keyboard Manager is an interesting one because there’s a lot you can do with it, including creating shortcuts to perform specific actions at the press of a key (or multiple). But to me, the PowerToys Keyboard Manager is especially useful because of some laptop review units I get.
Not a lot of companies are specifically sending out Portuguese review units for laptops, so I’ve had to try a mishmash of different keyboard layouts over the years, and one that’s particularly troublesome for me is the German keyboard, which uses a QWERTZ layout rather than QWERTY. For the sake of making things easier on myself, on the occasions when I do use a German review unit, I use Keyboard Manager to effectively swap the places of the Y and Z keys on the keyboard, making the experience feel far more natural to me.
I sometimes forget I’m using this tool, but when I run an app with admin privileges, that’s when reality can come crashing down, because PowerToys can’t manage my keyboard assignments if another elevated app is in focus, and I end up typing the wrong letter without realizing the issue.
1:52
Related
How to change or tweak your keyboard layout in Windows 11
The Windows 11 settings app makes it easy to change your keyboard layout for various languages, in just a few clicks.
5
Quick Accent
Being Portuguese is weird
Another language-specific tool that PowerToys has that can really help me throughout my day is Quick Accent, and again, it has to do with using keyboards that aren’t made for my language (Portuguese). Perhaps surprisingly, the US keyboard layout actually does a near-perfect job of allowing me to use all the accents I need, but it’s when I get a German or UK keyboard layout that things get a little more complicated, because many of the accents I need just aren’t accessible. Windows 11 does let me access special characters through a dedicated menu, but PowerToys Quick Accent makes things even easier.
Quick Accent is a very useful tool that shows you a flyout with all the available accents and variations of a letter. All you need to do is hold down the letter and press Space, and then you can navigate the list of available characters with your keyboard to easily enter them. This is much easier and more seamless than the menu used in Windows 11 itself, which is harder to navigate with a keyboard and has a lot of things I don’t always need.
Related
How to use special characters in Windows 11
Have you ever seen a character or symbol online and you’re not sure how to use it? Here’s how to use special characters in Windows 11.
4
New+
Creating the same kind of file is way easier now
Moving on to more universally useful tools, we have New+. I will admit I learned about this one way too late, but it’s still easy to see how useful it can be. New+ is a very inventive, yet simple idea. It creates a folder for “templates”, which is where you can store any files that you want to use as the basis for any future files you may need to create.
One thing I need to do somewhat frequently is create a statement for Portuguese customs whenever I have a review unit coming in, and that means modifying the same base document for different shipment numbers over time. With New+, I can store the basic structure of the statement document in the templates folder, and easily create a new document whenever there’s a new shipment that needs to clear customs, and I just have to add the information that’s different this time around. Usually, I have to try and remember where I stored the original file.
Many apps offer their own templates, but New+ is a sort of universal tool that can create a template for basically anything, and it’s amazing. My use case is fairly simple, but you can see how there’s potential for it to save time in so many situations.
Related
8 reasons you should be using PowerToys on your Windows PC
Take your productivity to the next level
3
Workspaces
Launch your important apps all at once
Workspaces is one of the more recent additions to the PowerToys suite, but it’s every bit as useful as many of the pre-existing tools. Workspaces is another relatively simple concept, but one that can save a ton of time. If you work on your computer every day, chances are you’re opening the same apps each time and setting them up in the same way. So why not make that all automatic?
With Workspaces, you can essentially save a layout of all your open apps at any given time, and this allows you to then launch all of these apps at once, even keeping the same positions the windows were in when you captured the snapshot. That way, you can easily launch them all at once and get right into your ideal setup so you can start being productive faster than ever. This is a great way to save even more time, and it also works great with another tool I’ll be touching on very soon: FancyZones.
Related
Ranking the 10 best PowerToys tools you should be using
Why aren’t you using PowerToys yet?
2
PowerToys Run/Command Palette
Launch apps faster than ever
If there’s anything I can’t stop singing the praises of, it’s quick launchers, and PowerToys goes as far as offering two of them now. PowerToys Run has been around the longest, but the recently-added Command Palette builds on top of it in some interesting ways to add even more features.
Regardless of which one you use, though, these tools are huge time-savers. Opening the Start menu or using the desktop to launch your apps may be fine in general, but when you try replacing that act with just using the keyboard, it makes a huge difference. All you need to do is press the keyboard shortcut to open the launcher, and you can immediately start typing what you want, then press Enter to open it. That alone is already a huge time saver, since you can open apps in a snap — much faster than moving the mouse to open the Start menu and clicking the right option.
But then there’s all the integrations these launchers support that save even more time. You can run terminal commands, install apps, do math operations, perform web searches, and more. All of it is available at your fingertips and at a moment’s notice by just pressing the keyboard shortcut. You can do so much, so quickly with these launchers, and they’re simply one of the best pieces of software you can have on your PC.
Related
7 PowerToys Run plug-ins I use to boost my productivity
This search bar does much more than launch apps
1
FancyZones
Perfectly organizing my screen
Multitasking can be a challenge, and it’s especially difficult to make full use of an ultrawide 32:9 monitor using just the built-in tools on Windows 11. Yes, Snap Layouts do help, but it’s still a somewhat limited setup, and it’s not the easiest to set up and adapt as needed. PowerToys FancyZones is an absolute game changer in this regard, so much so that I immediately had to try and find a macOS alternative when I first used a Mac.
FancyZones has a relatively simple premise, but its power is immense. With this tool, you can create custom layouts with different zones that apps can be snapped into, instantly resizing them to fit the selected zone. You can have as many zones as you want and with whatever dimensions you prefer, making it a breeze to create the ideal setup. And whenever you open a new app, you can just slot it into any slot, even if another app is already there. The apps are just overlaid.
It also matters how easy it is to do this. Windows 11 only snaps apps to a specific area by dragging windows to the edge of a screen, which makes it much more of a hassle to move a new app into a desired area. With FancyZones, you just hold down the key of your choice and move the window into the general area you want it to fit in, and it’s done. It resizes instantly, even skipping the fancy animations Windows uses that take up a bit more time.
Related
8 reasons you should be using PowerToys on your Windows PC
Take your productivity to the next level
PowerToys is a lifesaver
If you’re a Windows user, PowerToys is an absolute must-have on any PC you have. It makes it so much easier to get things done quickly, and it saves me time and headaches. I’ve praised PowerToys endlessly over the years, and I will continue to do so because it’s a genuinely amazing toolkit. The tools I mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg, and you’re bound to find even more things to love here.
