If you’re a fan of PowerToys Run, you’ll absolutely love the upcoming Windows Command Palette module

There is a lot -- and we mean a lot -- to love about PowerToys, and one of the most popular components of the utility collection is PowerToys Run. Loved by power users, this module is a super-powered launcher, search tool, terminal, command line, and more all wrapped up in one.

And soon it could be bettered. We’re not talking about an update version of PowerToys Run with new capabilities, but a completely new module -- Windows Command Palette. Also known as CmdPal, Windows Command Palette is described as the “next iteration of PowerToys Run”.

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Extensibility is at the heart of Windows Command Palette, with the aim being that it will become “your one-stop launcher to start anything”. In the current stage of development, the majority of existing PowerToys Run modules have already been ported across, and there are more in the pipeline.

There are also new capabilities to be found here, including:

• You can now search for packages on winget and install them right from the palette. This also powers searching for extensions for the palette
• The calculator has an entirely new implementation. This is currently less feature complete than the original PT Run one - we're looking forward to updating it to be more complete for future ingestion in Windows
• "Bookmarks" allow you to save shortcuts to files, folders, and webpages as top-level commands in the palette.

Interestingly, this new module looks set to be short-lived -- at least within PowerToys itself. The developers say:

CmdPal will eventually graduate out of PowerToys to live as its own application, which is why it's implemented just a little differently than most other modules. Enabling CmdPal will install its msix package.

The CI was minorly changed to support CmdPal version numbers independent of PowerToys itself. It doesn't make sense for us to start CmdPal at v0.90, and in the future, we want to be able to rev CmdPal independently of PT itself.

You can find out more here.