Microsoft PowerToys 0.61.0: Everything You Need to Know

Microsoft PowerToys users will surely rejoice in knowing that the tech giant has acknowledged their needs and has put out a brand new build loaded with goodies.

The Redmond tech colossus has just released PowerToys 0.61.0 for all users today. The project remains in public preview, but the latest version adds several notable changes and improvements.

Microsoft officials responsible for this company software have stated that release 0.61 focuses on stability and improvements.

What’s new with PowerToys 0.61.0?

We’re about to take a more in-depth dive and go over the changelog together, spotting all of the improvements and changes and the known issues that came with this build.

Just by taking a look at the Highlights section, we can observe that it says Quality of life improvements for Always on Top, FancyZones, and PowerToys Run.

General

• Upgraded the Windows App SDK runtimes to 1.1.2.
• The new Windows 11 context menu entries are now correctly added to Windows 11 dev channel insider builds. (This was a hotfix for 0.60)
• The old context menu entries are shown alongside the new Windows 11 context menu entries to be compatible with software that overrides the Windows 11 context menu behavior. (This was a hotfix for 0.60)
• Consolidated C# language version across the solution.
• Removed deprecated Segoe icon glyph codes and replaced them with the correct ones.
• Fixed an issue that caused a random accent key to be pressed on certain keyboard layouts when enabling some modules.

Always on Top

• Fixed border flickering when activating.
• Fixed a bug causing Always on Top to activate and hang when exiting PowerToys.
• Fixed black edges appearing on rounded corners.
• Fixed a bug that was causing 100% CPU consumption.

FancyZones

• Fixed a bug that caused layouts not to be applied correctly when many monitors reported having the same serial number. (This was a hotfix for 0.60)
• Fixed a bug that caused layouts not to be applied correctly on some virtual monitor setups (This was a hotfix for 0.60)
• A “Rows” default layout is now applied to vertical monitors instead of a “Columns” layout.

Image Resizer

• Screen reader now announces the size name instead of the class name.

File explorer add-ons

• Fixed an issue when creating thumbnails for SVG files created using Inkscape.

Keyboard Manager

• Adjusted wording on the editor when keys are orphaned.

Mouse utility

• Fixed a bug that caused the current Find My Mouse spotlight to hang when activated in the top left corner of the screen. (This was a hotfix for 0.60)

PowerRename

• The PowerRename window reacts to current dpi when created.

PowerToys Run

• Fixed a typo in the WindowWalker plugin UI.
• Improved performance by saving the search history files only on exit.
• PowerToys Run no longer shows results for some plugins when querying for empty spaces in a global query.
• Added support for showing localized names for some Win32 programs in the program’s plugin.
• The program plugin will now consider settings changed directly in ProgramPluginSettings.json.

Settings

• PowerToys Run settings page properly greys out the score adjustment setting when a plugin is not global.
• PowerToys Run plugins score adjustment field accepts only numeric characters.
• Will not run if started directly from its executable, as it was before the WinUI 3 upgrade.
• Fixed a typo in a PowerToys Run settings page description.

Installer

• Removed the dead code to make a msix installer.
• Updated the .NET dependency to 6.0.7.
• Won’t create a new PowerToys shortcut on update if it’s been removed manually by the user.

Development

• The Windows Store Package submission script was updated to show less UI while installing PowerToys. (This was a hotfix for 0.60)
• Added more functionality to the Monitor Report Tool.
• The release CI now includes the version number in the symbols artifacts.
• GitHub should now show .vsconfig as a JSON file. !
• Centralized the configurations for NetAnalyzers and StyleCop.
• Check spelling has been upgraded to version 0.0.20.

Known issues

• After installing PowerToys, the new Windows 11 context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer might not appear before a system restart.
• 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.

Of course, you can download PowerToys 0.61.0 from the Microsoft Store using this link or the official repository on GitHub.

If you already have PowerToys installed on your computer, the app will notify you about available updates, or you can manually update from settings.

And, just in case you are unfamiliar with PowerToys, we encourage you to check our guide on the best PowerToys utilities before you try it.

It comprises various tools, such as an app launcher, bulk file renamer, color picker, a utility to customize shortcuts, etc.

Have you noticed any other issues since installing this version of PowerToys? Share your experience with us in the comments section below.