8 ways that Powertoys can improve your Windows experience

Every recent Windows update feels like a lateral move in terms of new features added (unless you count Copilot, which I won’t). However, behind the scenes, Microsoft developers have built some super useful new features for Windows 10 and 11, but you have to install them manually. It’s a set of utilities called PowerToys, and the best part is they’re free and open source. Let me show you how you can use these tools to add features that Windows should have by default.

Set up PowerToys

To find and install PowerToys go to the Microsoft Store or download the installer directly from the official GitHub repo.

All PowerToys features should work right out of the box, but there are two things you can look into if a feature doesn’t work as intended. Make sure there aren’t any shortcut conflicts present with the default Windows shortcuts. If there are conflicts, PowerToys will leave a little warning on the main screen. Second, make sure the toggle for that particular feature is enabled. You can scroll through the long list of features on the left pane and switch on the feature if it’s not enabled by default.

Get Mac-like Spotlight Search

If you’ve used search on a Mac or a Linux system, you’ll be familiar with the Spotlight search feature. Basically, you press a shortcut which pulls up a search bar in the center of the display (regardless of where you are on the operating system) and there you can look up files, settings, apps, or even run quick calculations and conversions.

The feature is called PowerToys Run. Press the Alt and Space keys together to pull up the PowerToys Run search bar. Alongside the search bar, you also get a list of helpful keywords you can plug in before the query for specific actions. For example, typing two slashes “//” before the query opens it as a URL in the default browser. Similarly, you can search Windows settings with “$” and files and folders with a “?” prefix.

PowerToys also allows for extensive customization of this feature. I recommend checking out the PowerToys Run settings menu to tweak those settings, but among the many options, you can change the activation shortcut, the theme, positioning, text size, and enable, disable, or add more plugins to the feature.

Copy Text from images and PDFs

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR is the process of extracting text from images or videos. If you ever have to copy text from an image or video on your screen, there’s no need to manually type it. You can just run a quick PowerToys shortcut and copy that text directly to the clipboard.

First, let’s enable the feature. Open PowerToys, and search for Text Extractor and toggle it on. It should show you the activation shortcut for the feature too: Windows key+Shift+T. Open the screen with the text you’re trying to copy and press the shortcut combination. Then just drag the cursor over the text you’re trying to select. As soon as you do that, the text will automatically be copied to the clipboard, and you can paste it anywhere.

Schedule light and dark modes

Instead of fiddling with personalization settings manually, let PowerToys automatically turn dark mode on and off. The feature is called Light Switch and you may have to enable it manually. With Light Switch enabled, you have more granular control over the dark mode. You can quickly switch between light and dark mode using this shortcut combination: Windows key+Ctrl+Shift+D.

More importantly, however, you can now schedule dark mode switching. Set the fixed hours when dark mode should be enabled and disabled automatically. Alternatively, you can set it to automatically turn on and off at sunset and sunrise. The app might ask for your current location to determine accurate timings though.

Finally, you can decide whether dark mode applies to the system interface, just the apps, or both. None of these features are available in the default settings app.

Preview files without opening them

When working with different kinds of files (documents, images, or webpages) you might find yourself opening files just to see what’s in them. It happens more often when you don’t name and organize the files properly. Whatever the case may be, we can all agree it’s a waste of time and interrupts your flow. That’s why file previews exist.

Windows, by default, has something like this, but it’s not as useful as it can be. By default, you can only preview image files by enabling the preview pane (the Details button on the ribbon) in File Explorer. The preview is still pretty small though, barely larger than a full-sized thumbnail. Not to mention, you can’t preview any text, video, or coding files with this feature.

That’s what the Peek feature in PowerToys is for. Look for Peek under the PowerToys File Management tab and enable it. You can set a custom shortcut to peek files, but the default is pressing the spacebar once. Also, toggle on “Automatically close the Peek windows after it loses focus.” This setting will save you the hassle of manually closing the preview window and keep your workflow uninterrupted.

Now, let’s click on any file once to select it, and then press the spacebar. It should pop up in a big window and fade away when you click elsewhere.

Find out which annoying file won’t let you quit an app

Have you ever tried deleting or renaming a file only to find out it’s in use and can’t be modified? Annoyingly enough, Windows doesn’t give you a button to quickly end that app or process using the file. That’s the default case anyway. PowerToys has a feature called File Locksmith that’s designed for exactly that purpose.

Right-click on a file that’s in use and select “Unlock with File Locksmith” from the context menu. A window should pop up with a list of programs currently using that file with an “End Task” button next to each. Just kill all those programs, and you should be able to modify or delete that file right away.

If the option doesn’t show up in the menu, make sure it’s enabled in PowerToys settings.

Resize images on the fly

If you are a designer or content creator, you probably have to resize images all the time. Most people would just open the file in an editor like Photoshop and crop it to the correct dimensions, or create a new document with the desired dimensions and place the image there. It’s cumbersome, wastes time, and interrupts the flow.

PowerToys has an amazing utility that lets you resize images just by right-clicking on the image file. You can add preset dimensions that you commonly work with and resize images to those presets in one click without opening an app.

Make sure Image Resizer is enabled in the PowerToys Settings.

Right-click on an image file and select “Resize with Image Resizer.” Choose a size from the drop-down menu and click “Resize.” By default, the app will spit out a new file with the desired dimensions, but you can also overwrite the existing image, so there’s no duplicate.

You can also add custom sizes to the drop-down menu and remove metadata from resized images.

Better ways to paste text

Most people probably don’t need dedicated shortcuts for pasting text in different styles and formats, but if that’s you, PowerToys has a handy utility to speed up your workflows.

Say you frequently need to create .txt or .md notes or copy image files in a specific format from the internet to the disk. Normally, you would open copy the text, open the Notepad, create a new file, paste in the text, and then save it. Rinse and repeat for all notes. The same goes for images, where you will have to create a new document in an image editor, paste in the image, and save it in, say, PNG format. That’s a lot of repetitive work and lost time.

With Advanced Paste in PowerToys, you can simply paste text or images as files in these formats: markdown, txt, png, html, JSON. You can also configure a shortcut to directly paste text as plaintext and save yourself the trouble of manually removing the formatting later.

Advanced Paste works in two ways: you can open the Advanced Paste window directly with the activation shortcut and choose actions from the list or set custom triggers for each action, bypassing the Advanced Paste window directly. For example, I set the shortcut “Alt+Shift+K” to automatically paste copied text as a TXT file.

Keep the monitor from turning off

Technically, there is a way to keep the screen from turning off, but the setting is hidden in the power menus, and you have to manually reconfigure your power plan to do so. If you don’t want to mess with the power plan, and you have to enable and disable this feature often, try Awake in PowerToys.

Awake has a single switch to keep the PC awake. You can also adjust how the “keep awake” setting is applied. You can keep the screen awake indefinitely, for a fixed period, or set an end date and time for turning it off. It comes in handy if you’re running long-term tasks that stop if the screen goes dark or the PC sleeps. These custom modes aren’t available in the power plan settings.

PowerToys is supposed to be for power users, but I think most of those utilities belong in the default Windows stream. Until Microsoft decides to port them over, you can enable them yourself. There are plenty of others that I didn’t cover, so if you go looking, I’m sure you’ll find some relevant to you.