PowerToys has turned into one of those hidden gems that just makes life easier. It’s a free collection of small Microsoft-built tools that tidy up all the little annoyances in Windows – the ones that don’t quite justify installing separate apps but still waste time every week.
Here are a few we’ve been recommending lately:
Keyboard Manager & Quick Accent
If you type accented letters or symbols often (é, ñ, ü, etc.), Quick Accent lets you hold the base key and tap arrows to pick the accent.
Keyboard Manager also lets you remap keys or create shortcuts for the repetitive stuff.
Image Resizer
Right-click an image and resize it instantly – no Photoshop, no cropping. Great for headshots, artwork, website uploads, or sending images without choking someone’s inbox.
Text Extractor
Think of it like a snipping tool, but for text. Press (default: [⊞+Shift+T]) draw a box around anything on screen (even an image or PDF), and it copies the text inside. Capture mode is closed immediately after text in the selected region is recognized and copied to the clipboard. Close capture mode with [Esc] at any moment.
Perfect for grabbing details from screenshots, scanned docs, or error messages without retyping.
PowerRename
Batch rename hundreds of files using search-and-replace rules or numbering. Works straight from the right-click menu.
If you handle product photos, reports, or client folders, it’s a massive time-saver.
Always On Top
Keep one window visible over everything else with ⊞ + Ctrl + T. Useful for keeping notes, Teams chats, or timers visible while working in another app.
Crop and Lock
This one’s niche but clever – crop part of a window and make that cropped area its own floating window.
Handy if you only need a small slice of a dashboard or form visible without the rest of the clutter.
Color Picker & Screen Ruler
Designers love these two:
- Color Picker: (default: [⊞+Shift+C]) copies the colour code of anything on screen.
- Screen Ruler: Measures pixels and spacing — good for checking layouts or image sizes.
Advanced Paste
Still in preview but already great – lets you paste text cleanly or convert it as you go. You can strip formatting, reformat lists, or even turn data into tables mid-paste.
Workspaces (Preview)
The newest one. Set up a “workspace” to launch multiple apps, files, or sites at once. Start the day and have Outlook, Teams, your CRM, and a specific folder all open in one click.
Why it’s worth installing
PowerToys runs quietly in the background and updates automatically via the Microsoft Store. You can switch each tool on or off individually.
For businesses, it often replaces several paid utilities – resizing tools, file renamers, clipboard helpers – with one lightweight, secure package maintained by Microsoft.
Bottom line:
Try it for a week and you’ll wonder how you worked without it. PowerToys isn’t flashy, just practical – a bundle of small fixes that collectively save real time.
If you’d like us to roll it out for your users, we can do it remotely and show you which tools are worth enabling for your setup – no desktop access needed.