
PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity - dgellow
https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerToys
======
AceJohnny2
Related, have a look at the Sysinternals tools [1], particularly Process
Explorer [2], a powerful "Task Manager" replacement.

Sysinternals used to be Mark Russinovich's external company that provided
expert Windows debugging. His blog was impressive, and my little finger tells
me he knew more about Windows internals than Microsoft did.

So Microsoft acquihired Sysinternals, and his tools continue to be supported
:)

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/)

[2] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/downloads/proc...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer)

~~~
PinkMilkshake
I'd like to add [https://www.nirsoft.net/](https://www.nirsoft.net/) to the
list. 100's of useful Windows utilities made (and still updated) by one guy.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Yes. Whenever you need to do something it’s always good to check nirsoft and
SysInternals. It may be there already

They really should ship Windows with Notepad++, SysInternals and NirSoft. It
would make it a much nicer experience especially in machines where you can’t
install stuff due to regulation.

~~~
mnky9800n
Vscode would be a good substitute as well.

~~~
PeCaN
VSCode is gigantic and complicated and only really useful to developers
anyway. It does not really overlap with notepad. Notepad++ is almost simple
enough to replace notepad. (Personally it's still too complex to replace
notepad for me but I know it does for some people.)

~~~
majkinetor
VSCode is great for every day non-dev use.

~~~
laythea
notepad++ is far faster to load. A notepad replacement should load instantly.
VS code does not.

~~~
GhettoMaestro
My VS Code loads in like <2 seconds.

Maybe get a better computer? (not trying to be glib, seriously I wonder what
are you running on). I run on a 2017 Mac Book Pro and it is very very fast for
me.

Also, personal opinion: VS Code gets a big +1 from me due to it recently
adding remote development capabilities (eg connect to host over SSH, do
dev/compile stuff there).

~~~
garaetjjte
>My VS Code loads in like <2 seconds.

Two seconds is eternity for _text editor_.

~~~
GhettoMaestro
VS Code is more than a text editor. You're repeating a meme.

~~~
garaetjjte
It is, but discussion was about replacing notepad, not some IDE.

------
zubspace
Here are some utilities I love and use all-the-time on windows. Would love to
hear about your tools in the replies.

* Everything: [https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/)

An awesome and terribly fast file finder. You can add a global Shortcut, like
WIN+<something>. I use it all the time.

* Licecap: [https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)

A gif recorder. Useful to spice up your bug reports!

* WinDirStat: [https://windirstat.net/](https://windirstat.net/)

Low on Diskspace? Find out, where it's gone!

* Bulk Rename Utility: [https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk](https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk)

It's a bit arcane, but it renames everything in every format you can think of
with a bit of practice.

* Text Crawler: [https://www.filepuma.com/download/textcrawler_3.0.3-9304/](https://www.filepuma.com/download/textcrawler_3.0.3-9304/)

Grep everything in a directory. Use it for complex Regex searches on windows.
Unfortunately new versions are limited by a trial.

* Greenshot: [https://getgreenshot.org/](https://getgreenshot.org/)

The better snipping tool.

* CurrPorts: [http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html](http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html)

The better TCPView

* Process Explorer: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/proc...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer)

You know it already.

~~~
Multicomp
* WinDirStat -> WizTree . Same idea as WDS/Space Monger but uses Everything-style disk tree reading to be much faster scanning

* Licecap -> Gifcam . Similar functionality, slightly more modern UI

* Greenshot -> Jing . Mostly because I'm used to Jing and have it mapped to Ctrl + Print Screen

* Open Hardware Monitor . My Sandy Bridge laptop likes to go into Jet Engine mode and this gives me details as to what the hardware is doing. Combined with procexp and I have a clear view that svchost.exe has gotten away from itself again and its time for a reboot

~~~
basch
Everyone is going to have their own WinDirStat suggestion, because theres
about 50 million variants on the market, but WizTree is fastest.

------
sikim
As someone coming from macOS, the one feature that I miss most on Windows is
applications remembering their old positions when plugged into multiple
displays. When I first saw this happen on macOS, I thought it was some magic.
Now on Windows, I have to constantly drag each window back into its own
display every time I plug in/out from displays.

~~~
dmitrygr
Window positions? I'd be happy if icons would stay in one place as i
plug/unplug displays! To be honest MacOS and linux are the only current
consumer OSs that have multi-display handled. And of them, only MacOS properly
handles multi-display setups with differing DPIs.

~~~
afarviral
What do you have to do to get linux to work properly with multiple displays? I
just can't get the set up to work how I want on Arch.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Running 3 monitors here. Mixed DPI (laptop is 4K, both external displays are
1080P). Ubuntu with Gnome running on Wayland. A few of the applications I use
still don't support Wayland scaling properly (meaning they need to stay on
whichever monitor they were launched, lest their zoom level get messed up) but
it's getting better and all of the built-in Gnome stuff works great.

This genuinely took zero configuration on my part, besides perhaps going into
the Display control panel and changing the zoom level for the 4K display.

------
velcrovan
Now there's a blast from the past.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys#Windows_95](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys#Windows_95)

~~~
slovenlyrobot
Command Prompt Here was a mandatory install, forgot all about it!

~~~
userbinator
It's a simple enough registry edit that I've memorised it and apply it to all
the machines (including VMs) I work with.

    
    
        HKCU\*\shell\Command Prompt Here\command = %WINDIR%\system32\cmd.exe

~~~
quietbritishjim
On modern Windows it's built in, you just hold ctrl+shift (actually I think
just shift will do) as you right click.

~~~
Tempest1981
I think you can also click on the address bar in Explorer, and type "cmd" or
"powershell". Even "bash" if you install WSL.

~~~
frosted-flakes
With Alt+D to focus the address bar, this is super convenient. I use it all
the time.

~~~
WorldMaker
Command Prompt Here is also directly in the File menu of Windows 10's File
Explorer's ribbon. Alt+F,R is the shortcut.

(File Explorer's ribbon follows your Win+X setting that if you have PowerShell
your default, that shows up instead of classic Command Prompt.)

------
nickjj
I mainly use WSL within Windows but here's a bunch of general Windows tools I
use: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-
use](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use)

The productivity focused short version is:

DexPot[0] for creating hotkey driven virtual desktops (similar to how i3
launches and switches between them)

Ditto[1] for multiple clipboards (searchable and has multiple paste types,
much better than what comes with Windows 10)

Keypirinha[2] for launching apps and folders with fuzzing searching (IMO much
better than what comes with Windows 10)

AutoHotKey[3] for remapping global hotkeys and filling in gaps for specific
things you want to do

wsltty[4] for a low input latency rock solid terminal (best paired with tmux
for tabs / splits and buffer searches)

There's in depth blog posts and videos on how all of these work in the link at
the start of this comment. I've been using Windows as a primary dev
environment for ~20 years and the last half of that has been using it for
Linux based development (initially with VMs but now with WSL and Docker).

[0]: [https://www.dexpot.de/?lang=en](https://www.dexpot.de/?lang=en)

[1]: [http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/](http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/)

[2]: [http://keypirinha.com/](http://keypirinha.com/)

[3]: [https://www.autohotkey.com/](https://www.autohotkey.com/)

[4]: [https://github.com/mintty/wsltty](https://github.com/mintty/wsltty)

------
sundvor
Thanks for sharing; I particularly like the looks of FancyZones - it'll really
save me time arranging my Terminal windows etc, and also assist setting up
standard layouts of working.

~~~
PhaseLockk
FancyZones looks like a godsend for those with ultrawide monitors. Not being
able to effectively divide up the space was always a drawback compared with
just having two normal sized monitors, this could solve that issue.

~~~
mszcz
I agree. I do have an ultrawide monitor and a secondary monitor and it seems
that FancyZones doesn't (yet?) have support for multiple monitors. It looks
nice and is useful but I'll be sticking to GridMove for window management for
the time being.

------
lostmsu
Hooray, competition in window management :-)
[https://losttech.software/stack.html](https://losttech.software/stack.html)

~~~
crispinb
I hadn't seen Stack before. Have you used it & would you recommend?

~~~
lostmsu
I'd be biased: I wrote it :)

The PowerToys tool lacks many things, including multiple monitor support,
tabs, etc

~~~
djsumdog
I'd give it a try if I still developed on Windows. I find it amazing no one
has made a good tiling window manager for Windows yet. On Linux I use i3 and
love it. Back in the day I used that auto-hotkey script that did window
tiling. It was okay, but kinda buggy.

------
xurukefi
Also recommended: Everything [1], a stupid fast file search engine for
Windows. The initial index build takes less than a second for 100k files (no
idea how it does that). Much better than what Windows provides natively.

[1] [https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/)

------
lysp
A tool I couldn't live without is ZTreeWin:

* [https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm](https://www.ztree.com/html/ztreewin.htm)

If anyone ever used xtree gold back in the day - it's the exact same thing,
but works with modern windows. Because it's all keyboard based and no mouse,
all file operations can be done quickly via muscle memory.

Also another vote for everything mentioned below. Fastest file search there
is. Even if I know where something is, it's still quicker and easier to use
Everything to find it.

------
opencl
This is the most useful intern project I've ever seen. At least the batch
rename tool is an intern project, not sure about the other ones.

------
jedberg
Hah! When I saw this I thought the title was missing a (1995) on it. I
remember installing the power tools as soon as they were released. I used
every single one of those tools on a regular basis.

I'm glad they've revived the idea and allowed their developers to publish this
repo. I hope they keep adding to it (even though I don't use Windows
anymore...)

~~~
userbinator
_I 'm glad they've revived the idea and allowed their developers to publish
this repo._

I was disappointed to find out that this is _not_ the original PowerToys,
which offered far more functionality. This appears to be something else, using
the same name.

~~~
djsumdog
Yea, I thought it was going to be the source code to the original power tools.

------
privateSFacct
Can't beleive this is from the same company that puts Candy Crush Saga and
other junkware on Windows 10 "Pro" installs - and then limited the ability to
have a default profile that picks up their removal with new profiles. The
hoopjumping to clean up the Win 10 "Pro" mess is silly.

What enterprise is asking for all this junkware to be installed - it makes
absolutely no sense for this to be on domain networks. I keep on reading that
Microsoft listens "closely" to their customers - and am like - really?

~~~
rasz
>Can't beleive this is from the same company that

I can. Have you looked at it? Its a 22.2 MB shortcut help screen and some
window tiling helper, 22.2 MB of total fluff. Its a direct opposite of what a
Power user would want. Original 205 KB PowerToys/Tweak UI were meant for
advanced users wanting an easier access to hidden features.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Eh, those are times when chat clients weigh 400Mb and come with their own
browser.

------
whateveracct
I always loved PowerToy calculator.

