Power Toys: v0.74.0 Release

In the v0.74 release cycle, we focused on stability and improvements.

Installer Hashes

| Description | Filename | sha256 hash | |----------------|----------|-------------| | Per user - x64 | PowerToysUserSetup-0.74.0-x64.exe | 1C4ECE9F11488BAFFAE6B76D2B0504FA18BFFEA11EBC38BCC87F5D86AEA87C7C | | Per user - ARM64 | PowerToysUserSetup-0.74.0-arm64.exe | 4F3842FAB0839A361A15A06B7720BA8A0FE7F9AF98EA94245C08DEF37678CA4A | | Machine wide - x64 | PowerToysSetup-0.74.0-x64.exe | 648992E8CEA08F3C63C7CCBD554ADDF500ECBC4560187310BC12E6CB9C2F38E3 | | Machine wide - ARM64 | PowerToysSetup-0.74.0-arm64.exe | 2B6D92F1A0EA688C7EE882050AC9B030C8B3A18765163FB6D67E5E694A4D4FE3 |

Highlights

• Upgraded to Windows App SDK 1.4.1, increasing stability of WinUI3 utilities. Thanks @dongle-the-gadget for starting the upgrade!
• Text Extractor was upgraded to its version 2.0, with a new overlay, table mode and more Quality of Life improvements. Thanks @TheJoeFin!
• Improved FancyZones stability, fixing some layout resets and improving handling of newly created windows on Windows 11.
• Fixed many silent crashes that were reported to Watson and the user's event viewer.

General

• Turning animations off in Windows Settings will now also turn them off in PowerToys.
• Upgraded the Windows App SDK dependency to 1.4.1. Thanks @dongle-the-gadget for the original 1.4.0 upgrade!
• Show in the thumbnail label and application titles when running as administrator. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Upgraded the Win UI Community Toolkit dependency to 8.0. Thanks @niels9001!

Awake

• Added down-sampled variants to the application's icon. Thanks @morriscurtis!

Color Picker

• After adding a new color in the editor, the history will scroll the new color into view. Thanks @peerpalo!

Crop and Lock

• Fixed a Crop and Lock crash that would occur when trying to reparent a window crashes the target application. An error message is shown instead.

FancyZones

• Set the process and main thread priority to normal.
• Fixed handling newly created windows on Windows 11.
• Fixed scenarios where opening the FancyZones Editor would reset the layouts.

File Explorer add-ons

• Optimized CPU usage for generating SVG thumbnails.
• Improved handling of Gcode Thumbnails, including JPG and QOI formats. Thanks @pedrolamas!
• Better handled errors when sending telemetry, which were causing reported crashes.
• Fixed some thumbnails not being shown centered like before the optimization.

File Locksmith

• Shows files opened by processes with PID greater than 65535. Thanks @poke30744!
• Fixed a GDI object leak in the context menu which would crash Explorer.

Find My Mouse

• Added new activation methods, including by hotkey. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Hosts File Editor

• Ignore the default ACME sample entries in the hosts file. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Improved save error handling and added better error messages. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Corrected a check for an error when signaling the application to start as administrator.
• Refactored the context menu. Thanks @davidegiacometti!
• Fixed dialogs overlapping the title bar after the upgrade to Windows App SDK 1.4. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Keyboard Manager

• Distinguish between the regular minus key and the numpad minus key.

Mouse Without Borders

• Fixed a crash when trying to restart the application.

Peek

• Using Peek on HTML files will show a white background by default, similar to a browser's default behavior.
• Fix a white flash on Dark theme when switching file and improved the development file preview detection and adjustments.

PowerRename

• Fixed a crash caused by big counter values on the new enumeration method.

PowerToys Run

• It's now possible to select which shell is used by the Shell plugin.
• A combobox option type was added to the plugin options.
• Fixed a bug in the Calculator plugin that was causing decimal numbers to be misinterpreted on locales where the dot (.) character isn't used as a decimal or digit separator.
• Improved the Program plugin stability when it fails to load a program's thumbnail at startup.
• The use of Pinyin for querying some plugins can now be turned on in Settings. Thanks @ChaseKnowlden!
• Refactored option types for plugin and added number, string and composite types to be used in the future. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Fixed the entry for searching for Windows updates in the Settings plugin. Thanks @htcfreek!

Quick Accent

• The "All languages" character set is now calculated by programmatically querying the characters for every available language. Thanks @dannysummerlin!
• Added é to the Norwegian and Swedish languages. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Added a runtime cache to the "All languages" character set, to only calculate accents once per key.

Registry Preview

• Fixed focusing issues at startup.
• Improved the data visualization to show data in a similar way to the Windows Registry Editor. Thanks @dillydylann!

Runner

• Fixed hanging when a bug report was generated from the flyout. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Settings

• Improved the way the OOBE window reacts to Windows theme change.
• Fixed an issue that made it impossible to change the "Switch between windows in the current zone" "Next window" shortcut for FancyZones.
• Fixed a crash when entering a duplicate name for a color in the Color Picker page and improved clean up when cancelling a color edit. Thanks @davidegiacometti!

Text Extractor

• Text Extractor 2.0, with a new overlay, table mode and more Quality of Life improvements. Thanks @TheJoeFin!

Documentation

• SECURITY.md was updated from 0.0.2 to 0.0.9. Thanks @Aaron-Junker!
• Improved the README and main development document for clarity and completeness. Thanks @codeofdusk and @aprilbbrockhoeft!

Development

• Fixed PowerToys Run DateTime plugin tests that were failing depending on locale, so that they can be run correctly on all dev machines.
• Fixed PowerToys Run System plugin tests that were failing for certain network interfaces, so that they can be run correctly on all dev machines. Thanks @snickler!
• Fixed a markdown bug on the GitHub /helped command.
• Switched build pipelines to a new agent pool. Thanks @DHowett!
• New .cs files created in Visual Studio get the header added automatically. Thanks @davidegiacometti!