← All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
Hands-On Windows 119: Hands-on with Windows PowerToys
00:15:01
Advanced Windows 11 Customization
Loading summary
Transcript14 lines
- [00:00]
Paul Throt
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to take a Look at Windows PowerToys, a set of utilities made by Microsoft and also by individuals in the community that makes Windows better.
- [00:10]
Advertiser
Got great ideas but no idea how to build a website? Get bluehost with their AI design tool, you can quickly generate a high quality, fast loading WordPress site instantly. Once you've nailed the look, just hit enter and your site goes live. It's really that simple. And it doesn't matter whether you're a blogger, influencer or just starting your side hustle, bluehost has you covered with built in marketing and e commerce tools to help you grow and scale your website for the long haul. And when you upgrade to Bluehost Cloud, you get 100% uptime and 24. 7 support to ensure your site stays online through heavy traffic. Bluehost really makes building your dream website easier than ever. So what's stopping you? You've already got the vision. Make it real. Visit bluehost.com right now and get started today.
- [00:58]
Time's almost up on holiday shopping and so are amazing deals at Amazon. You'll save so much on early holiday electronic gifts like monitors, tablets and video games. You'll have money left over to snag a VR headset for some serious post holiday entertainment. Go long or an outdoor speaker system so the entire neighborhood can hear your holiday tunes. Oh what fun it is to save. Shop new deals, add it every day.
- [01:30]
After investing billions to light up our network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan vs Verizon and at&t@t mobile.com KeepAndSwitch.
- [01:48]
Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [02:01]
Podcasts you love from people you trust.
- [02:05]
Paul Throt
This is twit. Hello everybody and welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thrott and this week we're going to take a step outside of Windows in a way. We're going to look at a set of utilities that's very popular. You've probably heard of them called Windows Power Toys or just Power toys. We've had things like this for many years. Back in the windows 9x days we had those plus packs, remember in windows 7 and I think beyond we had something called Windows Essentials a set of utilities that Microsoft advertised as sort of completing the Windows experience. But we've also had this notion of PowerToys, right? And in the beginning, I think the earliest PowerToys actually date back to the late 1990s. But I always think of the version they made for Windows xp, where it was just a set of utilities that didn't quite make the os. And back then, Microsoft couldn't really update Windows very quickly. And so it was a way to kind of get these features out into the world in a way that if you wanted them, you could get them and you could enable each individually. Flash forward 20, whatever years, 25 years. Ish. And we still have PowerToys. So we have PowerToys for Windows 11 today. It's available in the store. It's perpetually in beta. Some of these features are at various stages of not completion, but spit shine, fit and finish, whatever. Some of the better ones have been rolled into Windows, which is actually really exciting. In Windows 11, I think. 23H2, Microsoft added that details view in File Explorer that started as a power toy. The text extractor capability that's in snipping tool today, for example, is still a powertoy. And the powertoy app is quite different from what it used to be. It is still a set of different apps, but it has this central app that's gone. It's gotten kind of big. It's the one thing I really don't like about it. And so they created this quick access pane. So when PowerToys is running, you'll see the item for it here in the tray. There's also this little coffee cup icon. This is for a tool called PowerToys Awake, which runs by default. This is one I don't actually use. It's not running, right? It is running, but it's not doing its thing right now. But I do use the PowerToys front end. You can customize this. So it has your most commonly used apps. I haven't done that here. These are the defaults, but you can also just go into the full app. And so this is the app. It's this giant thing. And so this dashboard page is where you can individually toggle on or off each of the toys. Right. The utility is kind of a strange name. And you can go down a list. You can explore this for yourself. If we just select. I'll select what I'm not going to really talk about command not found, for example. So it explains what's going on here. They always have a link here. This will Open the Microsoft Learn website to a page that has information about the tools. If you want to learn more, learn how it works, et cetera, et cetera. That's how you can do that. The versioning here is kind of tough. Like I said, it's always in beta. But in recent months they've added a major new feature to PowerToys, a major new tool called Workspaces. And Workspaces is sort of a power user version, I guess of Snap layouts in a way, right? So you have this workspace you've got meaning a screen or multiple screens where you've arranged ways Windows in a certain way. You have a specific set of apps running and you want to save it as a thing that has a name that you can call up later and recover that set. It's actually a set of layouts, right? So it's sort of an uber version, I guess of Snap layouts. So I'm not really going to demonstrate it per se. I don't have any tools that make sense to use this way. But you could sort of imagine, you know, maybe you're a coder, you have the coding window, you've got this reference that you're looking at to help you with the coding or maybe you're doing research where it's a website and a note taking app or whatever, you can just save those things and reference them later. And so this is the type of thing I actually expect Microsoft to add to Windows. I think this is a good candidate for that. And I think it's the type of thing that is a little bit more mainstream than even the remote desktop feature we looked at recently, the desktops in Windows 11. I think this is the type of thing a lot of people would use. So this is kind of interesting. This is the new marquee feature, I guess the big one. But There are several PowerToys apps that I do use pretty regularly. This isn't my system, so this isn't my account. So what we're seeing here is not my kind of customized setup. So I do different things with my own account. I've configured some of these specifically. But if you think back to the clipboard discussion we had in the multitasking episode talked about how Windows obviously has Control C, Control V, Control X, all that stuff built in. There's a clipboard history you can enable. So you do Windows key + whatever, Windows key + V typically to bring up the, you know, that window with the different things that are in a clipboard. But one thing I need all the time because of the type of writing I do, I often pull information from someplace and I want it pasted as text. So there's an advanced paste that's part of the PowerToys. So instead of winkey plus V, you get window winkey plus shift V. So I'll have to invent a reason to use this, but we'll go in and it integrates with the stuff that's built into Windows, right? So I'll just select this. So again, instead of when, you know, WinKey+V brings up the clipboard history, but Windows Key +Shift +V brings up this window, which is really interesting. And it has the one thing I want. This is what I want right here. Now, depending on the app, there are keyboard shortcuts for this. It's hard to remember these things. Control Shift V often does this, but some apps don't support it. So this is kind of a neat way to get this in any app very quickly. So I don't really have anything that's rich text or whatever that would benefit from this right now. But this is a really cool tool for me, at least it's something I actually use all the time, so it's really useful. The other one I use all the time. So for this, I do a lot of. I write a lot of news reports about Microsoft and other companies when they report their earnings. So, for example, I know if I go to Microsoft.com investor you'll see their latest earnings report. They're doing okay, by the way. You don't have to worry about them financially. I think they're going to be okay. But I go through, say, their column slides, right? And they'll have financial information in here, so I'll find. And they actually provide this information here in this case. But there's some instances where they provide numbers, and then they have the number from a year ago. And so what I want to do is bring up the calculator and I will have this thing running on top of it, like you can see here, and I'll have the numbers that I'm trying to compare. So if I want to know, you know, what percent of the total revenues is this part of Microsoft? I can do that math in the calculator, and then I can go paste that into whatever story I'm writing. But the problem is this thing keeps getting lost. So I find myself Control, you know, control Tab Control or, you know, sorry, Alt tab, Alt tab, trying to get back to the application window. So this thing supports a keyboard shortcut? Well, any app does, actually. PowerToys has an app called Always on Top. So It's Control Windows key +t and you can see that it has this kind of selection. Windows, right. So now even though I've selected this window, that thing still stays on the top and it stays. Well, you can move it, I mean you can move it wherever you want, but it stays on the top. So if I launch another app, it's going to launch behind there. I close it and if I bring it back, it's back to the way it was. It doesn't retain that mode or whatever, but it's a neat thing to toggle. It's something I actually use. And as we record this, it's that time of year, right? So we're getting that time of quarter, I guess we're getting a lot of financial results in and some companies just don't do the math for you. So I have to do the math and that's a tool I use for that.
- [10:07]
Advertiser
Got great ideas but no idea how to build a website. Get bluehost with their AI design tool you can quickly generate a high quality, fast loading WordPress site instantly. Once you've nailed the look, just hit enter and your site goes live. It's really that simple. And it doesn't matter whether you're a blogger influencer, just starting your side hustle. Bluehost has you covered with built in marketing and e commerce tools to help you grow and scale your website for the long haul. And when you upgrade to Bluehost Cloud, you get 100% uptime and 24. 7 support to ensure your site stays online through heavy traffic. Bluehost really makes building your dream website easier than ever. So what's stopping you? You've already got the vision. Make it real. Visit bluehost.com right now and get started today.
- [10:55]
It's better over here at&T customers switching to T Mobile has never been easier. We'll pay off your existing phone and give you a new one free. All on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com carrier freedom to switch today.
- [11:12]
Pay off up to 650 via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days. Free phone up to 830 via 24 monthly bill credits plus tax qualifying port and trade and service on go 5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is due.
- [11:27]
Paul Throt
Another tool I use all the time and I'll bring up like a reasonable web page instead of that thing is let me go to their home site here. Color Picker, right. I'm always trying to get color values either in HTML or RGB formats or whatever it might be. And again, a lot of these are keyboard shortcuts. So this one shift Windows key C color, right? And you can move it around and see what the different colors are. So if you wanted this exact color somewhere, because it's kind of a fun Call of Duty color or Xbox color, click on it. And then you get the different values in the way you want them and you can copy them to the clipboard and then go put them wherever it is, Adobe Photoshop, wherever you might be, you can go grab that stuff. So that's super useful to me as well. Image resizer. This is a good example of one that unfortunately, because it's not customized, I'm not going to be able to show you the way that I actually use it. But if you right click, you will see a resize with image resizer choice. Some of my systems, for some reason this doesn't actually appear. So in that case, I hold down the shift key, right click, and you get the old menu and you'll actually see it up here. So it's there, you know, you'll be able to get to it, however, and then you get to choose between their presets. So what I've done is I actually got rid of most of these presets. I kept this one actually. But I go in and I customize one. So I create my own. That's the specific size and aspect ratio that I need to use on my website. And so I can just right click, resize, choose my custom size, and then it creates a copy of that file using these rules built in here will determine how those things are named, which you can configure on your own. Super useful. Use that one all the time. I mentioned, I don't know, an episode or two ago, I guess two episodes ago, that there's a bug in Windows 1124H2 where the mouse cursor disappears, right? So you're in Notepad or Word or in a text box in a web browser, whatever it is, and you're writing and the mouse cursor is going. And this is, this has been a weird problem for me. And suddenly I find myself using this power toy all the time. It's called Mouse Utilities. It actually does three or four different things. But the one I use most is called Find My Mouse. So I got to, I got to sort of invent a, you know, a way that like the mouse is, it's not really hidden you can see it, obviously, but you hit the control key twice and it does that, right? And you can configure what that looks like, right. It can be different colors. The animation could be a little different. You can have different timing. Like it goes away on its own, like you saw there. So I find myself. I tap this all the time now. And actually this is kind of a fun thing to have for like a screen recording like this. You could make sure people can see the mouse cursor. Just double click that thing and it zooms right in on it. Right. So that's pretty cool. My favorite power toy, perhaps. I actually like. All the ones I just showed you I really like. But this one might be my favorite if. If I'm jealous of anything on the Mac, aside from the hardware, which is awesome. It would probably be their kind of search feature for running apps and finding files, too. But mostly for running apps, right? So in Windows, if I wanted to run Notepad, for example, and I don't have it pinned to anything, I could open search or start start typing. And that works. Right. But on the Mac, it's. I guess it's Command space is the shortcut, and it brings up a bar in the middle of the screen and you just type from there. So from wherever you are, it doesn't hide anything. It doesn't get in the way. You basically get that sort of Start shirt, start search functionality. So by default, in. Actually, I might have changed this. Is it like it. Did I change. Yeah, I did change it. So by default it's Alt plus space, which is the equivalent of the Mac keyboard shortcut. I actually change it on my own systems to be Windows key plus space, but because that makes more sense to me. But you basically get the same experience you see on the Mac. And I could do what I just did. It's not. It's no faster. Right. But you can run Notepad this way or any app. Right? You can do that. But you can see here they have these other things you can do from here as well. Right. And there's a whole list of these things. So most of these are not particularly interesting to me, per se. And I'm trying to think what I might have on here that would be useful. But if I type in my wife's name, what you'll see is that file I've been opening a few times lately, which is the photo of my wife and my daughter in Paris. And you can also. So you can search for files as well. So it is basically a universal search. I use it Mostly for application launch. I just like the ui. It's so clean. It's very reminiscent of the Mac, like I said, but with that kind of, you know, Windows 11 look and feel. So definitely something to take a look at. The other thing is, and again, this is not something I've done because this is not my normal sign in, but if you're going to use PowerToys, definitely modify this so it has those things that you use the most often. And then take the time to go into the dashboard and look through here, think about this stuff, see what it does. And if it's something you're not going to use, you can just toggle it off, right? So you don't have to worry about it. Because a lot of these things you can see most of these things actually have keyboard shortcuts and you don't want one of them to, you know, just pop up if you have no idea what it's doing or whatever. So if you're not going to use it, definitely take the time, you know, to turn it off here. It's there. I mean, it makes sense to do that. For example, I usually, I don't actually use Awake and that will get rid of that tray outcome, but just toggle off the ones you're not going to use. So it's worth exploring these tools. There's some really good stuff. I think every person's a little different. You'll see something, oh my. This is something I really need. Whereas might be something I would ignore and vice versa. But that's the point. So there's so much here, there's so much more we could talk about, but those are the ones I use and the new one workspaces, which again, I wouldn't be surprised to see that pop up in a future version of Windows, but absolutely worth looking at and knowing about. So free a lot of this stuff, like I said, from within Microsoft, some of it from without from the community, but supported by Microsoft in perpetual beta. It's changing all the time. They're updating it all the time. I'm sure we'll see new tools over the next year or so too. So good to know about. I hope you found this to be helpful. We'll have a new episode of Hands on Windows every Thursday. You can find out more@twit tv.hr thank you so much for watching. Thank you especially to our clients. Love Twit members. We appreciate you so much and I will see you again next week.
- [18:08]
Advertiser
It's better over here now at T Mobile get four, 5G phones on us and four lines for $25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins, all on America's largest 5G network.
- [18:21]
Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with autopay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement Due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. Ctmobile.
- [18:38]
Paul Throt
Com.