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I’ve never heard of PowerToys Run, but it looks like Spotlight on MacOS but for Windows. Is this correct?
Windows Power Toys is a suite of programs and tweaks for Windows, one of which is “Run” that behaves similar to spotlight search on macOS. If you have to operate in Windows, I’d say the suite is a must-have for Run, Fancy Zones, File Renamer, Screen Ruler, and Color Picker alone. It’s good software that should be built into the OS but for some reason is not— built and maintained by a dedicated open source community these days as opposed to just a couple individuals from inside Microsoft back in the day when Power Toys was a proprietary tool first released on Windows 95.
I use the plain text paste from powertools daily. Also does text OCR to clipboard.
Also has a “find cursor” macro
All the things you say are mandatory are a distraction at best. And hog a lot of resources.
Spotlight run: adds nothing except being a slow down. It's not that different from the standard search/run box. It just looks nicer. Way nicer.
Fancy zones: does not work reliable on multi monitor/big monitor setup. Useless in my use case. Has been for several years.
Fie renamer: .... Really? This is a power tot these days?
Screen ruler: i don't need rulers on my desktop, i need them in my apps.
Color picker: same. I do not have any use case for it. This is standard app functionality.
Every time i installed powertoys in the last 4/5 years i shrugged, cursed at Fancy zones for not working in my setup and removing it after a few days.
That's the same usage loop as rainmaker or most stardock tools by the way. Good ideas but fucks up to many things.
The new tabbed shell. (Or not so new anymore these days) Now that is a real powertoy. Or the lnx subsysteem.
What do you mean when you say fancy zones doesn't work reliably? I have 2 ultrawide monitors one on top of the other and I use 3 desktops, all with their own individual fancy zone layouts, it's one of the only things I use powertoys for!
I think you’re confused about my sentiments.
It doesn’t matter how well the current apps run, they should be 1st class citizen features seeing as power toys has been around since Windows 95 days as a series of useful tweaks and applications that are ubiquitous enough to exist through till now, including the constant expansion of features since the windows 10 open source version was published several years ago.
If there wasn’t a dedicated community around these features, then you’d have an argument that they’re superfluous but the project has taken off like a rocket with regular improvements and fixes all these years now.
The point is that Microsoft is prioritizing so many things with AI/copilot these days, it’s a damn shame they relegate actually useful features to the open source community where performance and integration is likely suffering, despite the community’s best efforts.
I somewhat got your arguments. I just don't feel the same about current day powertoys. They are not needed, don't add anything useful and don't work in a lot of setups. Current day powertoys are not what powertoys of the past where.
MS being focussed on the wrong shit to soon: well that has been true ever since the company existed. In the end looking back each and every innovation they did was needed but just years too soon and way too rough around the edges. I Guess we'll see the same with ai. Some things will stick and be used by others but refined.
Yes! And they also have an Everything (way better search program than Windows has EVER been) plugin that I’ve tweaked to include Everything’s results at the top since the index it does is exponentially better than Windows’ own. Highly recommend for those that want that two button search that has always found what I was looking for on my own computer.
Shoutout to KDE for their search function, KRunner?, as it is amazing and ready to go from the get go.
Pretty much.