Microsoft releases PowerToys v0.60.0 with great new Windows 11 features

Microsoft has released PowerToys v0.60.0, and while the company says that this is a release cycle that focuses on stability and improvements, this does not really convey how significant an update it is -- particularly for Windows 11 users.

Among some of the biggest changes and additions are a new zone identification technique for FancyZones, and rounded corner support for AlwaysOnTop. There are also new entries in the Windows 11 context menu for PowerRename and Image Resizer, making these utilities even easier to access. But things do not end there.

See also:

• Microsoft makes massive improvements to Windows Subsystem for Android in Windows 11
• Microsoft releases Windows Terminal Preview 1.15 with new keyboard selection option, scroll marks, and other improvements
• Microsoft releases new versions of free Windows 11 virtual machines

Users of OneNote will be pleased to learn that there is a now a new plugin for PowerToys Run, and the same utility has also been updated so that it gives better search results. Other tools which have been improved with updates, tweaks and additions include Keyboard manager, Mouse Utility, Always on Top and File Explorer add-ons.

Microsoft shares the following list of highlights for this release:

• PowerRename and Image Resizer now appear on the new Windows 11 context menu.
• There's a new PowerToys Run plugin for OneNote. Thanks @palenshus!
• FancyZones uses a new zone identification with monitor Id to increase stability and avoid zone resets.
• AlwaysOnTop now uses rounded corners for highlighting rounded windows on Windows 11.
• Added settings to PowerToys Run to better control the query results order. Thanks @jefflord!

But the full changelog is much lengthier:

General

• Upgraded the Windows App SDK runtimes to 1.1.1. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)

Always on Top

• Added support for more diverse keyboard shortcuts with a fallback to low level keyboard hooks. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Added rounded corner highlights for rounded corner windows on Windows 11.

FancyZones

• Fixed a bug where windows shown on all desktops were not working with FancyZones. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• When changing zone layouts, windows will match a new size/position if the option is on. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• Minor UI fix in FancyZones Editor. Thanks @ZetaSp!
• Fixed proper canvas layout rendering in FancyZones Editor and the unscaled monitor resolution is now shown.
• Fixed an issue with transparency in certain windows causing the window to go blank.

Image Resizer

• The Image Resizer entry is now shown in the new Windows 11 context menu.

File explorer add-ons

• Add a viewBox attribute to svg file thumbnails so that it tries to show the whole image, similar to what was done in the preview handler.
• Removed access to a remote image in the tests for markdown preview.
• Fixed flakiness in the markdown preview test suite with proper component initialization timeouts.
• Fixed the leaking WebView2 resources caused by svg thumbnails.

Keyboard Manager

• The Editor title bar is now shown in the immersive dark mode theme. Thanks @WilliamABradley!

Mouse utility

• The Mouse Pointer Crosshairs default activation shortcut was changed to not collide with a special character combination on some international keyboards.

PowerRename

• Fixed the file enumeration logic to only change enumerations at the end of the file name.
• Clicking on regex/date and time cheat sheet appends that item to the selected search or replace text field.
• The PowerRename entry is now shown in the new Windows 11 context menu.
• The title bar is now shown in the immersive dark mode theme. Thanks @WilliamABradley!

PowerToys Run

• A setting was added to disable and configure the input delay on searching queries. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• Fixed and added logs for default Web Browser detection. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• The Program plugin can now search .lnk shortcuts by their executable name. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• A new plugin for OneNote was added. Thanks @palenshus!
• Query caching and delayed execution was added to the OneNote plugin. Thanks @palenshus!
• Quality of life fixes for the TimeZone plugin, including fixes for empty subtitles, missing time zones and results not being found when expected. Thanks @TobiasSekan!
• Calls to the obsolete WebRequest API were removed. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Added common names for the share settings in the Settings plugins. Thanks @htcfreek!
• The Calculator Mages engine was updated to 2.0.1, for higher precision. Thanks for the testing and for pushing for the changes @htcfreek!
• Translation fixes for the Calculator and TimeDate plugins. Thanks @htcfreek!
• An entry for "Search Settings" was added to the Settings plugin. Thanks @jefflord!
• Removed uses of the deprecated BinaryFormatter, which contained vulnerabilities. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Added settings to better control the query results order. Thanks @jefflord!
• The Terminal plugin now uses a better API to detect installed Terminal packages. Thanks @htcfreek!

Settings

• Fixed a bug that said an update had failed, even if PowerToys was fully updated. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• OOBE window is resizable. (This was a hotfix for 0.59)
• OOBE can now show release notes through authenticated proxies.
• OOBE now hides the x64 and ARM64 installer hashes on the What's New page.
• Minor UI fix in the Keyboard Manager page. Thanks @ZetaSp!
• Fix in internal data type of CheckBox controls. Thanks @ghost1372!
• The title bar is now shown in the immersive dark mode theme. Thanks @WilliamABradley!
• Fixed a crash accessing the loading the System.Management API on ARM64 versions of Windows.

Installer

• Fixed signing of the setup custom actions dll in the new pipeline.
• The Visual C++ redistributable was updated to 14.32.31332 and fixed an installer error when a newer version was installed. Thanks @snickler!
• Updated the .NET dependency to 6.0.6.

Development

• Clean up of the CA1031 warning suppression. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Support for ARM64 binaries was added to the Microsoft Store submission task. Thanks @azchohfi!
• Added code for a tool to help identify monitor IDs.
• Support for ARM64 binaries was added to the winget package creation task.
• Updated the Pull Request template to better reflect project changes.
• Component Governance checks were re-activated on the new main branch.
• CI is failing to run tests calling the newer WebView 2 version, so these were disabled until a fix is found.
• Updated the tests SDK to 17.2.0.
• Nuget package versions used in the solution were consolidated.
• The CodeQL CI task was disabled in the repo, but was causing issues on forks, so it was removed.
• A specific Newtonsoft.Json version was specified in tests to avoid a vulnerability present in previous versions.
• FabricBot configurations were added to the repository.
• Added a dependabot configuration for updating GitHub actions dependencies. Thanks @naveensrinivasan!
• Updated the check-spelling action and added quality of life fixes to the workflow. Thanks @jsoref!

There are a couple of known issues to be aware of with this release, although neither are especially serious:

• After installing PowerToys, the Windows 11 new context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer may not appear before a restart.
• On some Windows 11 dev channel insider builds, the new context menu entries are not registering correctly and the classic context menu entries will be shown instead.
• There are reports of users who are unable to open the Settings window. This is being caused by incompatibilities with some applications (RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server and MSI AfterBurner are known examples of this). If you're affected by this, please check the linked issue to verify if any of the presented solutions works for you.

If you would like to download PowerToys v0.60.0, you can do so from GitHub. You can also use the update option if you already have an earlier version of the software installed.