Microsoft PowerToys Receives New Quick Launcher & Keyboard Mapper

[Uskompuf]

Microsoft PowerToys is an open-source suite of utilities for Windows 10 power users to customize their Windows experience, inspired by the original Windows 95 project of the same name. The latest v0.18.0 release brings two new utilities to the suite; PowerTools Run a modernized quick search launcher and Keyboard manager a new quick and easy tool to remap keys and shortcuts.

The PowerTools Run launcher is designed to be fast and offer more features for power users without sacrificing on performance. The code for the launcher is completely open-source so anyone can improve or develop modules for the launcher. The launcher can be accessed via Alt+Space and will be updated over time to receive new features much like Apple's Spotlight search.

For the entire commit history, please look at the 0.18 release. Below are just a few of the bullet items from this release.

• New Utilities
  • PowerToys Run, our new application launcher (use alt-space to activate)
  • Keyboard manager, a quick easy way to remap your keyboard
• Fixed #243's setting issue
• Improved performance on FancyZones #1264
• Lots of bug fixes!

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Battler624]

been playing around for a bit using run, its fuckin great, it has the same issues that I get with windows search that some programs wont show up in either place but show up on something like "everything", i'm guessing its an issue on my end.

The big difference is that its "fast" and that is fucking great, I would've wanted to use some win-key to launch it instead of alt-space but oh well.

 

[racedaemon]

I don't really see the difference between pressing the win key and typing and this. Also, while quick launch was active the CPU oscillated between 0 and ~50% every 4 seconds. The graph looked like a comb. I guess it was indexing files but the files should have been indexed by Windows search. Maybe they will add later new abilities that the start menu does not have.

 

[timta2]

much like Apple's Spotlight search.

Speaking of which, Mac OS X and macOS users have had this for years.