I like the utility that shows you what is keeping a file open if you can’t delete or update it. The file open problem used to happen a lot in the past and the only way to clear it was to reboot.
Resource Monitor's --> CPU tab --> Associated Handles section --> type in the file/folder name in 'search handles' box and press enter. It will list the program/service using it.
The crop and lock feature is gonna be so awesome for accessibility, I can move one region to a larger screen. Also the jump between screens over LAN is great, I supported software back in Win7 called Synergy that did this and it’s amazing.
Crop & Tool actually would be freaking amazing for Zoom convos! Yeah... Synergy. Wanted to use it for Linux to Windows connection but it is only in the new paid version... MWB actually was standalone from 2005, but does not support Linux... it was actually amazing they bundled it - one less App to install in case of a full Windows Clean Install
@@Raj_Pandya Powertoys have basically always been useful features that people at MS like, but aren't essential or simple enough to make it into Windows directly because then Microsoft would have to support them as a core feature. This means it usually has more power-user centered tools that might be too complicated or unintuitive for the average joe
That program didn't work for me at all unfortunally. I tried to connect my Win11 PC with my Win10 Laptop. The programm didn't work and the Internet wasn't helpful in soving the issue. I assumed it didn't work in general.
Have you tried Input Director? It lets you have and customize keyboard shortcuts to control the mouse. For example, you could set crtl+ ` to lock the mouse to the current screen or alt + ` to change it to a different desktop.
I've been using the FancyZones feature of PowerToys for years (on Windows 10). It's a must-have for anyone using large or multiple monitors. I think this might be built-in to Windows 11 now.
I really like the Quick Accent tool! Because it enables you to use the normal US keyboard instead of the US International keyboard (which I especially use for non English languages, I am a Dutch person) which has a delayed form way of typing for things like quotes, backticks and carets, which always annoys coding experience, in which you rather want see these tokens appear immediately after typing. The idea is that you can type a character and directly follow that by pressing the spacebar, to select the associated special character, in a way that looks a bit more like the smartphone way of typing.
Mouse without borders was already an existing thing and it is amazing. Aside from some minor things like jumping to the primary monitor when going to a computer instead of coming in from the edge it's great for home multi PC setups
i know this is an older feature but Fancy Zones for mulitple monitors is the main reason i use Power Toys and it is very useful on multiple and/or large screen monitors to set up having multiple windows and tools open at one time.
that is not a Windows feature, it is a feature supported by many programs, but thats all it is it is up to each program to implement that functionality PowerToys' paste as plain text is a global shortcut, that means that it works universally on all programs
FancyZones has dramatically improved my use of screen real estate, esp. as I can set up a custom set of window zones, even having them overlap if I like. As for Mouse Without Borders, I've found it to be buggy in mousing between my Win 11 and Win 10 systems. Until MWB becomes stable, I will continue to use Input Director which is easier to use in an ongoing basis, and has more functionality/features.
Thank you very much, Joe. Thanks to this video, I researched and discoverd that Mouse Without Borders is available separately for download from Microsoft itself, and I saw that it works not only for the mouse, but for the keyboard as well. I was about to spend money that I don't have to buy a bluetooth keyboard just so I could easily switch between my two computers and now this has solved everything. I am very, very grateful.
Peek is cool, but QuickLook is more useful for me. Maybe in future releases they will add a display content feature. For now, I can just view only media files. That's all. In my case, I want to see content of file (js, php, cmd, txt) and watch media files. So waiting next release and your awesome video. Like it
4:13 the default shortcut for Mouse Jump is easy. You can do Win+shift+D with one hand. I'd like to see the technique for doing the shortcut for Paste as Plain Text with one hand. Ctrl+alt+Win+V. Maybe it's possible to hit the V with the thumb while pressing the others with the back of the hand or something 😅.
I was trying for the longest time to find a way to have a single mouse and keyboard control both my work laptop and my home PC. I know I could just buy a switch (which I did) but it was really cumbersome and the delay after clicking the switch for the laptop/PC to recognize the devices was annoying. All the solutions I found software-wise were only working on a local network. Out of curiosity you mentionned "I think mouse without borders works only on the local network" but I figured I could give it a try: My work laptop is connected through a VPN to my company network which made other solutions unable to be used. However it looks like it works with mouse without borders !! Thank you so much !
Nice video, I've been using powertools sometimes but my human memory is stressing with so much shortcuts, I really hope microsoft at least add a new button to the TittleBar for an "Always on top window"
HI thio!, how to change Text Cursor Indicator so if we use two languages -> we will not allways need to see the lang bar. in windows 7 the blinking text cursor have some little triangle (right-to-left) thanks!
That "place as plain text" tool is just what I was looking, but didn`t know such tool exists. Thanks a lot. Before I had constantly a Windows editor text file opened and copied text into it and then copied over from there to remove formatting 😅
@@GaryB007 you realise that it is not a universal thing, right? you are just used to a lot of programs supporting that shortcut that you assumed it was a universal thing
That's not the new PowerToys thing. Selecting a file and pressing ctrl+space opens a new window with a preview of the file. PT's Monaco based text preview in Explorer is broken for me on Win11, so it's nice to have.
Had the exact same experience when trying to use Peek. Opened the window with the spinning windows circle and just sat like that for >5mins. Not sure what the problem is, but overall isn't really a deal breaker for me.
Have you reviewed Microsoft PC Manager (beta) yet? Very cool tool. On my old work notebook which only has 16 GB Ram, I use close to 32 GB when running 2 instances of VS 2022 64 bit. This is using a SSD so I don't feel it getting slow. However, there are times where I'm almost out of memory and this tool auto clears some for me which is really nice.
mouseWithoutBorders is a tool i use on daily basis it is a microsoft garage project, good to know that they added the functionality itself in the powertoys, but i will still continue using the software separately as i don't like the roundy bubbly GUI provided in powertoys.
Mouse Without Boarders - Allows you to use 1 Mouse and keyboard to control up to 4 PC's next to each other. (You said nothing about the keyboard being shared.) This is fantastic for me as I have been using "Share Mouse" which limits me to 2 machines unless I pay $49.
One tool I found to be too annoying to use was Quick Accent By the way, when I like a video, it's because I find it useful and I want to save it for future reference, though it's usually easier to search for videos I want to watch again. I saved this one for future reference
@@_SJ It sure is and I don't wish to come off as demanding, but as a viewer who enjoys the content here, I felt it was fair to put out a plea like that. Whether or not my plea affects Thio's preference for using Premieres or not is out of my hands. I'll take either outcome but I am hoping Thio will reconsider using Premieres.
I loved the Alfred application on the MacOS and i used Wox as an alternative for windows 11. But now, i feel that windows 11 including wox (as a collaboration, atleast) as a native alternative is a bliss to all the "maximum producitivity" users. It looks better than wox itself too.
Mouse Without Borders seems like a more complex version of KDE Connect... though Connect can only use your phone as a mouse. not the computer one across devices
I was using Chocolatey to update miscellaneous Windows installations on my machine when I decided to learn how Microsoft's WinGet works. To my surprise, WinGet can pull the most recent repo of PowerToys!
Everyone should get this. I find the window pinning function incredibly useful, but I have only scratched the surface of the other tools. Why is it not part of Windows?
Peek was extremly annyoing when it was first introduced. If I would press strg + space (for example in a game) it would always cancel the keypress event somehow. I belive it has been fixed now.
The paste as plain text, peek, registry preview, mouse jump features aren't new but they're good anyways oh and the text extractor language change was always there for me.
The Peek feature brings Mac's Quick Preview to Windows, and I love it, but it doesn't behave as good as it should. I prefer QL-win's QuickLook, a FOSS project that the same thing but better IMO.
Is there overlap between Power Toys and The Windows Club's Ultimate Windows Tweaker? Is one more complete than the other? And here I thought UWT was a replacement for Power Toys.
What's up. Just want to let you know I've been following you ever since I got into PC and I see a lot of other Geeks as well as you I like to call Smart Guys hating on you and I just think the way you explain things is way far better than most of these guys and I pretty much do not follow I trust your judgment and I like the fact that you do have videos showing your mistakes and that's what I like about you keep up the good work and thanks for the info
I like the utility that shows you what is keeping a file open if you can’t delete or update it. The file open problem used to happen a lot in the past and the only way to clear it was to reboot.
There used to be a problem for that, I forget the name, but yeah, good to have it here.
Resource Monitor's --> CPU tab --> Associated Handles section --> type in the file/folder name in 'search handles' box and press enter. It will list the program/service using it.
There was a program called “Unlocker” it only works for Windows XP.
I used to install unlocker to handle such things, the icon is a wand with a star on the end
The crop and lock feature is gonna be so awesome for accessibility, I can move one region to a larger screen. Also the jump between screens over LAN is great, I supported software back in Win7 called Synergy that did this and it’s amazing.
hi lexi
accessibility is great
Hi Lexi nice to see you here
Crop & Tool actually would be freaking amazing for Zoom convos!
Yeah... Synergy. Wanted to use it for Linux to Windows connection but it is only in the new paid version... MWB actually was standalone from 2005, but does not support Linux... it was actually amazing they bundled it - one less App to install in case of a full Windows Clean Install
LEXI?! GO NARRATE R/HARDWAREGORE!
Have not touched power toys since WIn95. The ones back then were extremely useful. I did not even know they had new ones, thanks.
I haven't found current power toys to be nearly as useful.
Use your own toys dude @@LarcR
I think there were the good set of tweaks that made it icon... I don't remember much about it but it helped a lot@@Raj_Pandya
@@Raj_Pandya Powertoys have basically always been useful features that people at MS like, but aren't essential or simple enough to make it into Windows directly because then Microsoft would have to support them as a core feature. This means it usually has more power-user centered tools that might be too complicated or unintuitive for the average joe
@@jthowardMany of the old Powertoys were often included in the suceeding OS. When they stopped making Powertoys during Win7, Win8 happened lol.
Mouse without borders been around for a long time, but was standalone previously. Makes perfect sense to have it with powertoyz.
I remember the Microsoft garage page where it was, it feels like it was forever ago, now I need to update my powertoys to have it
That program didn't work for me at all unfortunally. I tried to connect my Win11 PC with my Win10 Laptop. The programm didn't work and the Internet wasn't helpful in soving the issue. I assumed it didn't work in general.
Nevermind, it works now.
Most of these are actually taken from other projects. They are all credited in each of toy's settings and in the docs.
Have you tried Input Director? It lets you have and customize keyboard shortcuts to control the mouse. For example, you could set crtl+ ` to lock the mouse to the current screen or alt + ` to change it to a different desktop.
Fun fact, the Paste without formatting thing can be done in most applications by just pressing CTRL SHIFT V, works on all OS ;)
I've been using the FancyZones feature of PowerToys for years (on Windows 10). It's a must-have for anyone using large or multiple monitors. I think this might be built-in to Windows 11 now.
Yeah Win11 adopted the fancy zones feature natively haha
May Allah (S.W.T.) guide you and bestow upon you His Blessings; Ameen.
Thanks. PT user here, never have time to get into these releases, glad to have them so nicely explained in a digestible 6 min vid. 10/10
I wish each tool was an addon/plugin that can be added or removed manually. It would make adding community addons possibile.
That is theoretically possible as Powertoys is open source. You could modify the source code to add a plugin and compile it
Yes the power toys for Windows 95 could be separately installed.
Yep and altogether it's quite big like around 3gb
It's possible, just add the addon to the "components" folder.
@@ashleygreen5343 Is there a documentation, article, tutorial, anythig? I couldn't find anything, that's why I wrote this comment.
I really like the Quick Accent tool! Because it enables you to use the normal US keyboard instead of the US International keyboard (which I especially use for non English languages, I am a Dutch person) which has a delayed form way of typing for things like quotes, backticks and carets, which always annoys coding experience, in which you rather want see these tokens appear immediately after typing.
The idea is that you can type a character and directly follow that by pressing the spacebar, to select the associated special character, in a way that looks a bit more like the smartphone way of typing.
i tried to turn it on before but it kept activating when playing games which was very annoying
That registry tool looks like it will be quite useful. I work with .reg files from time to time and I'm hoping this increases productivity.
Mouse without borders was already an existing thing and it is amazing. Aside from some minor things like jumping to the primary monitor when going to a computer instead of coming in from the edge it's great for home multi PC setups
man i hate the youtube premiere "feature"
EDIT: great video though 👍
i know this is an older feature but Fancy Zones for mulitple monitors is the main reason i use Power Toys and it is very useful on multiple and/or large screen monitors to set up having multiple windows and tools open at one time.
i love fancy zone
Paste as plain text = ctrl-shift V
Was going to post the same thing. We already have this (ctrl+shift+v) without an extra app.
That's a common application feature, but this is a global shortcut.
that is not a Windows feature, it is a feature supported by many programs, but thats all it is
it is up to each program to implement that functionality
PowerToys' paste as plain text is a global shortcut, that means that it works universally on all programs
Paste as plain text, I accomplish this by pasting into notepad. Thank you for the videos.
The "Mouse without border" function is incredible, thank you!
Great stuff Thiojoe! All the best from Scotland.
My favorite tool is umm... I still have to wait for the premiere.
as a person after the premier, this is a you problem :P
Yeah
FancyZones has dramatically improved my use of screen real estate, esp. as I can set up a custom set of window zones, even having them overlap if I like. As for Mouse Without Borders, I've found it to be buggy in mousing between my Win 11 and Win 10 systems. Until MWB becomes stable, I will continue to use Input Director which is easier to use in an ongoing basis, and has more functionality/features.
The registry and the crop window actually amazing.
Thank you very much, Joe. Thanks to this video, I researched and discoverd that Mouse Without Borders is available separately for download from Microsoft itself, and I saw that it works not only for the mouse, but for the keyboard as well. I was about to spend money that I don't have to buy a bluetooth keyboard just so I could easily switch between my two computers and now this has solved everything. I am very, very grateful.
Thanks for your videos..Always something to learn. Thanks again!
Guys, gentle reminder..... Just a very small thumbs up as per ThioJoe 😁
did you download the subtitles?
@@Hyperboid Nope
@@_SJthen how did you get this comment in hours early?
@@Hyperboid Channel membership 🙂 My way of support to my most favorite TH-camr 👍🏻
Crop and lock is amazing!!! Thank you!
Peek is so useful at times. Been using it since it came out, I have w10.
And one I use from time to time is Text Extractor.
Personally I don't like peek, a better application would be quicklook, its open source and has more features
power rename (batch rename) also got some nice improovements :)
Peek is cool, but QuickLook is more useful for me. Maybe in future releases they will add a display content feature. For now, I can just view only media files. That's all. In my case, I want to see content of file (js, php, cmd, txt) and watch media files.
So waiting next release and your awesome video. Like it
4:13 the default shortcut for Mouse Jump is easy. You can do Win+shift+D with one hand. I'd like to see the technique for doing the shortcut for Paste as Plain Text with one hand. Ctrl+alt+Win+V. Maybe it's possible to hit the V with the thumb while pressing the others with the back of the hand or something 😅.
I was trying for the longest time to find a way to have a single mouse and keyboard control both my work laptop and my home PC. I know I could just buy a switch (which I did) but it was really cumbersome and the delay after clicking the switch for the laptop/PC to recognize the devices was annoying. All the solutions I found software-wise were only working on a local network. Out of curiosity you mentionned "I think mouse without borders works only on the local network" but I figured I could give it a try: My work laptop is connected through a VPN to my company network which made other solutions unable to be used. However it looks like it works with mouse without borders !! Thank you so much !
Useful tools, thanks for sharing.
I wish Mouse Without Boarders worked on smart devices. Would give old devices new purpose and reduce e-waste.
I used to use mouse without borders when it was a standalone experiment! Very cool that it is now included.
Premier is almost like waiting for my favorite TV show to go live.
Nice video, I've been using powertools sometimes but my human memory is stressing with so much shortcuts, I really hope microsoft at least add a new button to the TittleBar for an "Always on top window"
HI thio!,
how to change Text Cursor Indicator so if we use two languages -> we will not allways need to see the lang bar. in windows 7 the blinking text cursor have some little triangle (right-to-left)
thanks!
Excellent videos I’ve watched a couple, much better than everything else out there. You have a new subscriber.
That "place as plain text" tool is just what I was looking, but didn`t know such tool exists. Thanks a lot. Before I had constantly a Windows editor text file opened and copied text into it and then copied over from there to remove formatting 😅
Ctrl+Shift+V pastes plain text, without the need for any tools.
@@GaryB007 Thanks, but that didn't work for me before. With power toys I was able to use a custom shortcut.
@@GaryB007 you realise that it is not a universal thing, right?
you are just used to a lot of programs supporting that shortcut that you assumed it was a universal thing
2:05 In File Explorer, pressing Alt + P opens the preview pane
That's not the new PowerToys thing. Selecting a file and pressing ctrl+space opens a new window with a preview of the file.
PT's Monaco based text preview in Explorer is broken for me on Win11, so it's nice to have.
Thanks. that's great coverage of the new functions. Followed.
I love mouse without borders, been using it for so many years
Paste as plain text.. is
Ctrl - Shift - V
it generally works everywhere except some office products.
Had the exact same experience when trying to use Peek. Opened the window with the spinning windows circle and just sat like that for >5mins. Not sure what the problem is, but overall isn't really a deal breaker for me.
peek and paste as plain text is already very useful to me
and now I'ms sure crop and lock is gonna be my next frequent use
Have you reviewed Microsoft PC Manager (beta) yet? Very cool tool. On my old work notebook which only has 16 GB Ram, I use close to 32 GB when running 2 instances of VS 2022 64 bit. This is using a SSD so I don't feel it getting slow. However, there are times where I'm almost out of memory and this tool auto clears some for me which is really nice.
This brings some tools I use lot in macOS and cannot use at work with Windows, so great!
6:11 no, here's an italic thumbs up _👍_
mouseWithoutBorders is a tool i use on daily basis it is a microsoft garage project, good to know that they added the functionality itself in the powertoys, but i will still continue using the software separately as i don't like the roundy bubbly GUI provided in powertoys.
1:38 CTRL+Shift+V
Mouse Without Boarders - Allows you to use 1 Mouse and keyboard to control up to 4 PC's next to each other. (You said nothing about the keyboard being shared.) This is fantastic for me as I have been using "Share Mouse" which limits me to 2 machines unless I pay $49.
Crop and Lock sounds extremely interesting, though, realistically I will never use it at all, but still.
it will be really helpful to me as a dev, I can have logs onscreen without wasting space taken by the ide
One tool I found to be too annoying to use was Quick Accent
By the way, when I like a video, it's because I find it useful and I want to save it for future reference, though it's usually easier to search for videos I want to watch again. I saved this one for future reference
Powertoys run with the everything plugin is just chef's kiss
Please don't do premieres. The worst TH-cam feature of all time. If the video is ready, just let us watch it.
Agreed. I wonder what does it give to make it worth it
I personally don't like premieres but it's his channel 🙂
@@_SJ It sure is and I don't wish to come off as demanding, but as a viewer who enjoys the content here, I felt it was fair to put out a plea like that. Whether or not my plea affects Thio's preference for using Premieres or not is out of my hands. I'll take either outcome but I am hoping Thio will reconsider using Premieres.
@@tomashubelbauer I honestly think the same way 💯
Dunno how TH-cam thought of this sucking feature
Thanks. I always find your videos very useful.
I loved the Alfred application on the MacOS and i used Wox as an alternative for windows 11. But now, i feel that windows 11 including wox (as a collaboration, atleast) as a native alternative is a bliss to all the "maximum producitivity" users. It looks better than wox itself too.
And yes, I was, infact, unaware that powertoys run was a thing (since, I only recently got to know about the powertoys application itself)
2:10 on peak,change the default keyboard shortcut.and it should work.
Mouse Jump, Fanzy Zones, and Run are super critical.
Mouse Without Borders seems like a more complex version of KDE Connect... though Connect can only use your phone as a mouse. not the computer one across devices
Thank you @ThioJoe for that nice programm that will help me in some work.
I think what the key remapping needs profiles is saves which is a no brainer and an ability to switch between profiles.
I bet it's an incredibly useful set of tools for Windows even if we had heard you talk about it before.
Got Powertoys a few months ago, it's so amazing!!
Didn't know you use it to. I love powertoys. 1 program with many solutions. I also use intel unison. Makes my desk a powerhouse.
damn I severely underestimated how interesting this video would be
lots of great features added
I love what the other channel said...."and if you don't like the video be sure to click the thumbs down button twice." 🙂
I was using Chocolatey to update miscellaneous Windows installations on my machine when I decided to learn how Microsoft's WinGet works. To my surprise, WinGet can pull the most recent repo of PowerToys!
""More Power!!"
Thank you, king! That bloody name, I haven't heard of it since Windows XP
I only needed to disable F7 key, but cool that you can use for other stuff
Thanks, TJ~
Thank you for the reminder. I just installed it. For me, "Nice".
5:17 the < sign wasn't properly escaped in the subtitles
Thank for the info. I love powertoys
Everyone should get this. I find the window pinning function incredibly useful, but I have only scratched the surface of the other tools.
Why is it not part of Windows?
I have been powertoys for a while now and it's pretty amazing. glad to soo new features
Whats the difference from the PowerToys paste vs just using Ctrl+Shift+V?
The program has to implement the latter. PowerToys should have it work everywhere
Ctrl+Shift+V is not a universal feature, it is just widespread enough for you to assume that it is
Thanks 🙏🏻 🖤
Wow this was cool. More please!
Thanks for the video!
The cursor without borders is something I will have to try. I use 2 computers at time, and a 2nd mouse is somewhat annoying at times.
I am so glad to making this to be official instead of some external tools, for example Meazure.
Small thumbs!
What was that search bar he opened up at 4:57. Is there a shortcut for it?
I'm not sure if just using ctrl+shift+v is doing the same as paste as plain text function in the end
Can you add your old TJ logo on the thumbnail for nostalgia? :)
Good sort of toys, thanks
Peek was extremly annyoing when it was first introduced. If I would press strg + space (for example in a game) it would always cancel the keypress event somehow. I belive it has been fixed now.
The MouseWithoutBorders program was an independent project by Microsoft as well, I wonder why they decided to merge it with PowerToys.
Pleasse do a video explaining what windows troubleshooting actually does. Because it sure as hell never fixed my problem.
The paste as plain text, peek, registry preview, mouse jump features aren't new but they're good anyways
oh and the text extractor language change was always there for me.
The Peek feature brings Mac's Quick Preview to Windows, and I love it, but it doesn't behave as good as it should. I prefer QL-win's QuickLook, a FOSS project that the same thing but better IMO.
1:58 doesn't ctrl+shift+v do the same?
Yes, pastes formatted text as plain text. I don't remember KB shortcuts very well but I have this one.
@@FoombaThat's a feature implemented in many programs, bit it's not universal, and not a feature of Windows itself.
Thiojoe OP in the chat
Color picker is a realy cool tool!
Is there overlap between Power Toys and The Windows Club's Ultimate Windows Tweaker? Is one more complete than the other? And here I thought UWT was a replacement for Power Toys.
oh, I always delayed installing it, but these are awesome
What's up. Just want to let you know I've been following you ever since I got into PC and I see a lot of other Geeks as well as you I like to call Smart Guys hating on you and I just think the way you explain things is way far better than most of these guys and I pretty much do not follow I trust your judgment and I like the fact that you do have videos showing your mistakes and that's what I like about you keep up the good work and thanks for the info
How about - Steps Recorder? Just found it few days ago
Still gave a big thumbs up because the video was really helpful!
Im downloaded powertools like 1 mont ago. And i love it now