Have you seen how many PowerToys tools there are? There's an absolute ton. I mean, it makes sense; it started its life during Windows 95, and even then, it still had a generous 15 tools you could play with. In its 30-year lifespan, it has seen a lot of cool additions. As such, here are some of the tools that were added in the past year and probably slipped your radar.

4 PowerRename makes renaming files a breeze

No more manually adding a number suffix to your files

Starting off with a handy tool that appeared in July of last year, PowerRename is a great way to batch-rename a ton of files. Just select them all and invoke PowerRename to quickly and easily rename lots of files without manually having to edit each one. There's a few options in there too, including find-replacing specific words, changing capitalization rules, and the option to either modify just the filename or the extension too.

3 PowerToys Workspaces makes arranging your favorite apps super easy

One click and you're done

Do you have a little app ritual you do when you boot up your PC? Perhaps you put your browser on one monitor, an office suite on a second, and your favorite social media on a third. So, what if you had a tool that "remembered" your setup and automatically built it up in a flash when you boot up your PC?

Well, that's just what PowerToys Workspaces does. We spotted it back in August 2024, and it works similarly to the similarly-named feature in Microsoft Edge. You can use Workspaces to "remember" how you've set your windows up, then invoke it again to bring up all of your apps, just how you like them.

2 PowerToys ZoomIt lets you take a closer look at what's on-screen

Computer, enhance

This one, released around the end of January 2025, was nabbed from the Sysinternals suite. It's a very handy little tool that lets you zoom in on a specific area of your screen for a closer look. Once you've got the perfect zoom, you can then doodle on the screen and annotate things, then save it as a screenshot. You can even render it as a video and play it back whenever you want.

1 The PowerToys Command Palette speeds up opening apps and settings

Type what you want, get what you want

You'd be forgiven for not knowing this one, even if you're a PowerToys veteran. After all, it released just shy of two weeks ago, so some people may not have even had the chance to check it out for themselves. However, it's definitely well worth your time if you like launching apps and settings through your keyboard alone.

It's called the Command Palette (or "CmdPal" to its friends and family) and you can invoke it by pressing Win+Alt+Space. Once it's open, you can type what you want to achieve into the box, and the app will do its best to figure out the best use case for your entry.

For example, as shown in the GIF above, if you enter "tercan," Command Palette knows that you're looking for the Terminal Canary app and will suggest it right at the top. You can also punch in an equation into the search bar, and Command Palette will figure out that you want to know the answer and suggest passing your mathematics over to the Calculator app. It's a really smart piece of kit and well worth a try if you haven't yet.

PowerToys has a ton of tools

Given the sheer number of tools that PowerToys has, it's really easy to lose track of all the new ones and how they can help you. Which is a shame, because in the past year alone, we've seen some incredibly potent additions to the PowerToys toolbox. Hopefully you've found your new favorite tool amongst all of these recent additions to the decades-old suite.