New Awake tool in PowerToys prevents Windows 10 from entering sleep mode

You should know that Microsoft has just released a new update for PowerToys, one that comes with a new Awake tool, which prevents PCs from going to sleep.

Also worth taking into consideration is that the PowerToys version 0.41.2 includes some stability bug fixes, accessibility improvements, and more.

Microsoft presents the new Awake tool for PowerToys

To be more exact, the Awake tool will give you the ability to prevent your Windows 10 devices from entering sleep mode.

It provides users with options to keep their PCs awake indefinitely, or a predefined amount of time, during which the OS will not be allowed to enter its low-power state.

The Redmond-based tech company says that this feature is a more than convenient way for us to keep our screens awake on demand.

And for those of you who are interested on browsing through the entire list of changes that version 0.41.2 of PowerToys brings to the table, we got you covered:

• Shortcut guide removed support for long Win press to activate.
• Turned off FancyZones canvas editor magnetic snapping to allow keyboard support
• Updated Color Picker GIF for OOBE.
• Removed outdated MSIX code
• Upgraded all projects to Modern WPF 0.94
• Dropped support for the module interface API to save settings
• Removed Winstore dependency

General

• Improved auto-update experience in PowerToys Settings
• Updated general bug report information to be more robust
• Improved settings layout for radio button groups. Updated images and menu for OOBE.
• Localization updates

Awake

• New Awake utility added! Power-Users can now keep their computer awake on-demand without having to manage its power settings.

Color Picker

• Improvements to Color Picker’s zoom functionality.
• Prevent duplicate colors from appearing in selection history
• Improved UX to better support keyboard navigation.
• Fixed OOBE hotkey description.

FancyZones

• Full keyboard support for canvas editor’s main window and context.
• New support for faster layout selection by double clicking a desired layout from the editor to automatically apply it and dismiss the editor.
• New zone activation behavior allows users to snap a window to the zone who’s center is closest to the cursor.
• Added process icon for FancyZones.
• Fixed issue with zoning minimized windows.
• Fixed a bunch of accessibility bugs
• Now an independent exe, detached from the runner process.

File Explorer Add-Ons

• Adjusted Markdown newline behavior to be less strict so the add-on behaves more like GitHub implementations
  Image Resizer
• Fixed bug with custom size option where leaving a height/width value blank caused the output to be a 1 x 1 square pixel. Now the blank value automatically adjusts to the height/width that was set.

Image Resizer

• Fixed bug where specifying a width but no height generated a 1×1 px image instead of auto-adjusting the height.

PowerRename

• Fixed File Explorer crash when running PowerRename

Settings / Welcome to PowerToys

• Fixed Color Picker’s key-binding information

Shortcut Guide

• Customize key-binding from settings menu
• Took Shortcut guide out of the runner process to remove unnecessary interdependencies

Installer

• Updated .NET Core dependency to 3.1.15
• Reduced the network traffic by making the updater not download files when they’re already cached

New maintenance update, a few hours after patch release

Interestingly enough, only a couple of hours after the release, the PowerToys team has offered users another maintenance update, which would address a serious problem.

The issue was that PowerToys kept being incorrectly flagged as a malicious program by Bitdefender antivirus software.

Thus, Microsoft advised users to install version 0.41.3 in order to resolve this problem.

Have you also updated your PowerToys? Let us know if you encountered any issues, in the comments section below.