PowerToys version 0.81.0 has been released. This release includes a new AI-powered application called Advanced Paste, which converts clipboard material into several formats. Command Not Found now works with PowerShell Gallery and supports ARM64. Accessibility concerns have been addressed, and the Environment Variables Editor, Hosts File Editor, and Registry Preview utilities have been released.
PowerToys v0.81.0
In the v0.81 release cycle, we focused on stability, improvements and new features.
Installer Hashes
Description Filename sha256 hash Per user - x64 PowerToysUserSetup-0.81.0-x64.exe E62B1EE81954A75355C04E7567B1C9AAD6034AA0C61AD22587F8746D0DC488C8 Per user - ARM64 PowerToysUserSetup-0.81.0-arm64.exe 75330A2DB4F9EF9B548B3B58F8BF3262C8C67E680042639BBBBC87EA244F24E2 Machine wide - x64 PowerToysSetup-0.81.0-x64.exe 29F151B01FE3C94D4FD75F2D6E8F09A6C0F0962385B83A5A733F6717312F639D Machine wide - ARM64 PowerToysSetup-0.81.0-arm64.exe FCE636220E1FB854771258D9558E07B7532728AD4C722A7920338DEE60DEECF7 Highlights
- New utility: Advanced Paste, an AI powered tool to convert your clipboard content into another format. Thanks @craigloewen-msft for the core functionality and @niels9001 for the UI/UX design!
- Command Not Found now uses the PowerShell Gallery release and now supports ARM64. Thanks @carlos-zamora!
- Fixed most accessibility issues opened after the latest accessibility review.
- Refactored, packaged and released the main Environment Variables Editor, Hosts File Editor and Registry Preview utilities functionality as controls to be integrated into DevHome. Thanks @dabhattimsft for validating and integrating into DevHome!
General
- Fixed crashes on older CPUS by updating .NET to 8.0.4. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)
Advanced Paste
- New utility: Advanced Paste, an AI powered tool to convert your clipboard content into another format. Thanks @craigloewen-msft for the core functionality and @niels9001 for the UI/UX design!
AlwaysOnTop
- Enable border anti-aliasing. Thanks @ewancg!
Color Picker
- Improved accessibility by making the Settings and Copy to clipboard buttons focusable.
- Improved accessibility by supporting picking a color using the keyboard.
Command Not Found
- Upgraded the Command Not Found to use the new PowerShell Gallery release and support ARM64. Thanks @carlos-zamora!
Environment Variables Editor
- Refactored, packaged and released the main Environment Variables Editor functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome. Thanks @dabhattimsft for validating and integrating into DevHome!
FancyZones
- Fixed window wrap around behavior when overriding Windows key and arrow shortcuts on single monitor scenarios. Thanks @DanRosenberry!
- Improved accessibility of the editor by listing the keyboard shortcuts in the Canvas Editor.
File Explorer add-ons
- Updated Monaco to 0.47 and added the new sticky scroll setting for DevFiles viewer. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
- Added the new font size setting for DevFiles viewer. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
- Added support for .srt (subtitle) file previewing in DevFiles viewer. Thanks @PesBandi!
Hosts File Editor
- Refactored, packaged and released the main Hosts File Editor functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome. Thanks @dabhattimsft for validating and integrating into DevHome!
Image Resizer
- Supported narrator announcing the checkboxes in the UI and the sizes combobox. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Improved accessibility by increasing contrast in the text color of combobox items.
Installer
- Fixed some install failures when the folders the DSC module is to be installed in isn't accessible by the WiX installer. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)
- Detecting install location for DSC now uses registry instead of WMI to improve performance. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed an error causing the machine scope installer to not install correctly in machines where the documents folder is in a UNC network path. We're still working in a fix for the user scope installer.
Keyboard Manager
- Fixed startup crashes in the editor when the Visual C++ Redistributable wasn't installed. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)
- Fixed an accessibility issue where the first button wasn't focused after adding a new row in the editor.
- Environment Variables are now expanded in arguments of programs started through a shortcut. Thanks @HydroH!
Paste as Plain Text
- Paste as Plain Text was removed as a separate utility, since its functionality is now part of the Advanced Paste utility.
Peek
- Updated icons, tweaked UI and refactored internal code. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
- Updated Monaco to 0.47 and added the new sticky scroll setting for DevFiles viewer. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
- Added the new font size setting for DevFiles viewer. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
- Upgrade the SharpCompress dependency to 0.37.2 and fixed archive parsing. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed aliasing in the image viewer.
- Added support for .srt (subtitle) file previewing in DevFiles viewer. Thanks @PesBandi!
Power Rename
- Fixed the descriptions that were mixed up in the regex helper (\S and \w).
PowerToys Run
- Added support for UNC paths starting with // in the Folder plugin. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed the plugin load failed message to list the failed plugins. Thanks @belkiss!
- Icons for MSIX packages are now updated when a package update is detected. Thanks @HydroH!
- Use Mica backdrop instead of Acrylic to fix random crashes caused by the Windows composition being momentarily turned off.
- Improved accessibility in the results list action buttons by improving contrast of hovered/focused buttons.
Quick Accent
- Added support for the Esperanto character set. Thanks @salutontalk and @ccmywish!
- Added the ǽ and ϑ characters. Thanks @PesBandi!
Registry Preview
- Refactored, packaged and released the main Registry Preview functionality as a control to be integrated into DevHome. Thanks @dabhattimsft for validating and integrating into DevHome!
Text Extractor
- Fixed an issue causing the Settings page to not be opened when clicking the Settings button in Text Extractor's overlay. (This was a hotfix for 0.80)
Settings
- Improved UI ordering of the File Explorer add-ons. Thanks @niels9001!
- Applied fixes to theme overriding and cleaned up unneeded code. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed misspells in references to the Hosts File Editor utility. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Improved accessibility of the Select Folder button in the Settings Backup UI.
- Improved accessibility by improving focus and tab navigation in the ColorPicker page. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Added a description to the fallback encoder setting in the Image Resizer page. Thanks @Kissaki!
- Refactored and improved performance in the PowerToys Run plugins UI in the Settings page. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
- Fixed a crash when a user cleared the contents of a Number Box in the PowerToys Run plugins additional options. Thanks @htcfreek!
- Update the PATH environment variables with the user scope PATH when entering the Command Not Found page to improve PowerShell detection.
Documentation
- Added the WebSearchShortcut plugin to PowerToys Run thirdPartyRunPlugins.md docs. Thanks @Daydreamer-riri!
- Updated COMMUNITY.md with the project managers that are part of the core team.
- Improved the DSC samples.
- Added the 1Password plugin to PowerToys Run thirdPartyRunPlugins.md docs. Thanks @KairuDeibisu!
- Added the UnicodeInput plugin to PowerToys Run thirdPartyRunPlugins.md docs. Thanks @nathancartlidge!
Development
- Updated System.Drawing.Common to 8.0.5 to fix CI builds after the .NET 8.0.5 upgrade was released.
- Fixed file permissions when doing a build using cache on PR CI. Thanks @dfederm!
- Removed the Test SDK reference on ARM64 to fix local building for ARM64. Thanks @dfederm!
- Replaced make_pair with RemapBufferRow in Keyboard Manager internal code. Thanks @masaru-iritani!
- Added CODEOWNERS file to protect sensitive parts of the repo. Thanks @htcfreek for the help in figuring out how to make the spellcheck folder an exception!
- Added comments in code. to make it clear what the error badge in PowerToys Run plugin list in Settings means. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
- Enabled caching by default in the PR CI pipelines. Thanks @dfederm!
- Disabled caching for PR started from forks, since those were failing. Thanks @dfederm!
- Removed baseline files for policy checking and turned on the "TSA" process in the release pipelines instead.
- Added caching of nuget packages in the PR CI pipelines. Thanks @dfederm!
- Updated the release CI pipelines TouchdownBuildTask to v3.
- Moved the release CI pipelines to ESRPv5.
- Added a policy for GitHub Copilot Workspaces for the repo on GitHub. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
