Power Toys: v0.64.0 Release

In the v0.64 release cycle, we focused on releasing new features and improvements.

Installer Hashes

x64 Installer Hash

5BAFC1EF4683F83C16D0FCE6BA11F97A9B6E9C12732B07FF8480F2D47F72C44E

ARM64 Installer Hash

D3F225D00A748E94A5BC09C21CE6ED3A1B1F0DC5E1D6FE1870F82A0154B0772C

Highlights

• New utility: File Locksmith allows seeing which processes are currently using the selected files.
• New utility: Hosts File Editor allows you to edit your hosts file in an Editor UI. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Settings has a new feature for backing up / restoring the settings from a file. Thanks @jefflord!
• FancyZones allows you to set defaults for horizontal/vertical screens to get better intended behavior for new screens and cases where a monitor ID resets.
• PowerToys ships with Group Policy Objects settings for force disabling and enabling PowerToys utilities in organizations. Check the GPO docs for more details.
• Added a warning about deprecating Video Conference Mute in the future (v0.67), please check https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/21473 for more information.

Known issues

• The Text Extractor utility fails to recognize text in some cases on ARM64 devices running Windows 10.
• 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 is a 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.

Always on Top

• Detect and put a window on top again if it's no longer on top.

Color Picker

• Added the hexadecimal integer format. Thanks @marius-bughiu!

FancyZones

• Added a way for users to configure default layouts for horizontal and vertical screens.
• Replaced remaining Number Boxes in FancyZones Editor with Sliders, to improve accessibility for screen readers.
• Fixed an issue breaking window switching shortcuts.

File Locksmith

• Added a new utility: File Locksmith.
• Thanks @niels9001 for the design on the UI!

Group Policy Objects

• Group Policy Objects settings for force disabling and enabling PowerToys utilities.
• Thanks @htcfreek for your help in reviewing to make sure the shipped settings conform to system administrators expectations!

Hosts File Editor

• Added a new utility: Hosts File Editor. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Thanks @niels9001 for the design help on the UI!
• Thanks @davidegiacometti for fixing the bugs found and adding features up until release!
• Thanks @AtariDreams for consolidating the packages comparing to the rest of the project!
• Thanks @htcfreek for adding a scrollviewer to the entry editor!

Keyboard Manager

• Fixed a delay that was not being cancelled properly. Thanks @AtariDreams!

Mouse Utilities

• Changed the opacity setting to the 1-100 range. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

PowerToys Run

• Changed image loading to release the images in PowerToys Run main executable. This is a try to fix the "app.dark.png" missing issues received after a PowerToys update.
• Fixed the PowerToys Run hiding after the default action failed. Thanks @hlaueriksson!
• Fixed the PowerToys Run allows showing after a context menu action succeeded. Thanks @hlaueriksson!

Quick Accent

• Corrected "Dutch" word to "German". Thanks @damienleroy!
• Added the Portuguese language accents. Thanks @pcanavar!
• Fixed positioning of toolbar on scaled desktops.

Screen Ruler

• Improved the acrylic brush used in the menu. Thanks @niels9001!

Settings

• Added a feature to backup/restore settings to/from a file. Thanks @jefflord!
• Fixed an issue causing shortcuts shown in OOBE not updating to new values when the window was re-opened.
• Fixed the "Documents" folder usage in the backup/restore feature. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Text Extractor

• Added a warning about how to install languages for OCR recognition.
• Fixed the overlay not focusing after the first activation.
• Added spaces between CJK and non-CKJ words. Thanks @maggch97!

Video Conference Mute

• Added a setting to hide the Video Conference Mute overlay when muted. Thanks @akabhirav!
• Added a warning about deprecating Video Conference Mute in the future (v0.67), please check https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/21473 for more information.

Installer

• Added some missing files that were causing Settings and PowerRename to not function correctly on some configurations.
• Updated the .NET dependency to 6.0.10.

Development

• Consolidated nuget packages and removed a few unused packages.
• Updated the Windows.CppRT to the latest version. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Removed the cxxopts dependency, which was no longer used. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Updated the cziplob dependency to 0.25. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Updated the System.IO.Abstractions dependency. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Turned on C++ code analysis and incrementally fixing warnings.
• Added the install method to the issue template on GitHub, since some issues seem to be related to specific installation methods.
• Automated installer hash creation in the release CI.
• Simplified use of .First() on ImageResizer. Thanks @AtariDreams!
• Improved and clarified the issues templates. Thanks @Jay-o-Way!
• Fixed a PTRun unit test to be more compatible with .NET 6. Thanks @AtariDreams!