Clint Rutkas has announced the release of PowerToys 0.93, which focuses on new features, stability, optimization improvements, and automation. The release includes improvements to the Command Palette, Advanced Paste, Peek, Text Extractor, and PowerRename modules. The dashboard now features a modern card-based dashboard with clearer descriptions and faster navigation. Command Palette has over 99 issues resolved, including bringing back Clipboard History, adding context menu shortcuts, pinning favorite apps, and supporting history in Run. Peek now supports instant previews and embedded thumbnails for Binary G-code 3D printing files, making it easy to inspect models at a glance. Mouse Utilities introduces a spotlight highlighting mode that dims the screen and draws attention to the cursor. Test coverage improvements for multiple PowerToys modules have been made, ensuring better reliability and quality.

PowerToys Release v0.93

In the  v0.93 release cycle, we focused on new features, stability, optimization improvements, and automation.

Installer Hashes

Description	Filename	sha256 hash
Per user - x64	PowerToysUserSetup-0.93.0-x64.exe	DE0255AC0CA3B77957EB8B36F916C38A8C4CEBDACF245774BE4A771E5EBCEE3B
Per user - ARM64	PowerToysUserSetup-0.93.0-arm64.exe	B7A90D2A9A5D197C3AA223DDFAD9D9708A9E19EB108893199D3BB5E1E7893B9E
Machine wide - x64	PowerToysSetup-0.93.0-x64.exe	87AD002128903949EF4B2E377865C3880CF2435E196DEA5520698AF9860D6201
Machine wide - ARM64	PowerToysSetup-0.93.0-arm64.exe	F5FD52489576E41C378A5A6BAD441BE9DF1881D466BDC6C1D0BD7385880AA1A3

Highlights

• PowerToys settings debuts a modern, card-based dashboard with clearer descriptions and faster navigation for a streamlined user experience.
• Command Palette had over 99 issues resolved, including bringing back Clipboard History, adding context menu shortcuts, pinning favorite apps, and supporting history in Run.
• Command Palette reduced its startup memory usage by ~15%, load time by ~40%, built-in extensions loading time by ~70%, and installation size by ~55%—all due to using the full Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation mode in Windows App SDK.
• Peek now supports instant previews and embedded thumbnails for Binary G-code (.bgcode) 3D printing files, making it easy to inspect models at a glance. Thanks  @pedrolamas!
• Mouse Utilities introduces a new spotlight highlighting mode that dims the screen and draws attention to your cursor, perfect for presentations.
• Test coverage improvements for multiple PowerToys modules including Command Palette, Advanced Paste, Peek, Text Extractor, and PowerRename — ensuring better reliability and quality, with over 600 new unit tests (mostly for Command Palette) and doubled UI automation coverage.

Command Palette

• Ensured screen readers are notified when the selected item in the list changes for better accessibility.
• Fixed command title changes not being properly notified to screen readers. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Made icon controls excluded from keyboard navigation by default for better accessibility. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Improved UI design with better text sizing and alignment.
• Fixed keyboard shortcuts to work better in text boxes and context menus.
• Added right-click context menus with critical command styling and separators.
• Improved various context menu issues, improving item selection, handling of long titles, search bar text scaling, initial item behavior, and primary button functionality.
• Fixed context menu crashes with better type handling.
• Fixed "Reload" command to work with both uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Added mouse back button support for easier navigation. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed Alt+Left Arrow navigation not working when search box contains text. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Updated back button tooltip to show keyboard shortcut information. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed Command Palette window not appearing properly when activated. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed Command Palette window staying hidden from taskbar after File Explorer restarts. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed window focus not returning to previous app properly.
• Fixed Command Palette window to always appear on top when shown and move to bottom when hidden. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed window hiding to properly work on UI thread. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Fixed crashes and improved stability with better synchronization of Command list updates. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Improved extension disposal with better error handling to prevent crashes. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Improved stability by fixing a UI threading issue when loading more results, preventing possible crashes and ensuring the loading state resets if loading fails. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Enhanced icon loading stability with better exception handling. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Added thread safety to recent commands to prevent crashes. Thanks  @MaoShengelia!
• Fixed acrylic (frosted glass) system backdrop display issues by ensuring proper UI thread handling. Thanks  @jiripolasek!

Command Palette extensions

• Added settings to each provider to control which fallback commands are enabled. Thanks  @jiripolasek! for fixing a regression in this feature.
• Added sample code showing how Command Palette extensions can track when their pages are loaded or unloaded.  Check it out here.
• Fixed Calculator to accept regular spaces in numbers that use space separators. Thanks  @PesBandi!
• Added a new setting to Calculator to make "Copy" the primary button (replacing “Save”) and enable "Close on Enter", streamlining the workflow. Thanks  @PesBandi!
• Improved Apps indexing error handling and removed obsolete code. Thanks  @davidegiacometti!
• Prevented apps from showing in search when the Apps extension is disabled. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Added ability to pin/unpin Apps using Ctrl+P shortcut.
• Added keyboard shortcuts to the Apps context menu items for faster access.
• Added all file context menu options to the Apps items context menu, making all file actions available there for better functionality.
• Streamlined All Apps extension settings by removing redundant descriptions, making the UI clearer.
• Added command history to the Run page for easier access to previous commands.
• Fixed directory path handling in Run fallback for better file navigation.
• Fixed URL fallback item hiding properly in Web Search extension when search query becomes invalid. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Added proper empty state message for Web Search extension when no results found. Thanks  @jiripolasek!
• Added fallback command to Windows Settings extension for better search results.
• Re-enabled Clipboard History feature with proper window handling.
• Improved Add Bookmark extension to automatically detect file, folder, or URL types without manual input.
• Updated terminology from "Kill process" to "End task" in Window Walker for consistency with Windows.
• Fixed minor grammar error in SamplePagesExtension code comments. Thanks  @purofle!

Mouse Utilities

• Added a new spotlight highlighting mode that creates a large transparent circle around your cursor with a backdrop effect, providing an alternative to the traditional circle highlight. Perfect for presentations where you want to focus attention on a specific area while dimming the rest of the screen.

Peek

• Added preview and thumbnail support for Binary G-code (.bgcode) files used in 3D printing. You can now see embedded thumbnails and preview these compressed 3D printing files directly in Peek and File Explorer. Thanks  @pedrolamas!

Quick Accent

• Added Vietnamese language support to Quick Accent, mappings for Vietnamese vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y) and the letter d. Thanks  @octastylos-pseudodipteros!

Settings

• Completely redesigned the Settings dashboard with a modern card-based layout featuring organized sections for quick actions and shortcuts overview, replacing the old module list.
• Rewrote setting descriptions to be more concise and follow Windows writing style guidelines, making them easier to understand.
• Improved formatting and readability of release notes in the "What's New" section with better typography and spacing.
• Added missing deep link support for various settings pages (Peek, Quick Accent, PowerToys Run, etc.) so you can jump directly to specific settings.
• Resolved an issue where the settings page header would drift away from its position when resizing the settings window.
• Resolved a settings crash related to incompatible property names in ZoomIt configuration.

Documentation

• Added detailed step-by-step instructions for first-time developers building the Command Palette module, including prerequisites and Visual Studio setup guidance. Thanks  @chatasweetie!
• Fixed Broken SDK Link: Corrected a broken markdown link in the Command Palette SDK README that was pointing to an incorrect directory path. Thanks  @ChrisGuzak!
• Added documentation for the "Open With Cursor" plugin that enables opening Visual Studio and VS Code recent files using Cursor AI. Thanks  @VictorNoxx!
• Added documentation for two new community plugins - Hotkeys plugin for creating custom keyboard shortcuts, and RandomGen plugin for generating random data like passwords, colors, and placeholder text. Thanks  @ruslanlap!

Development

• Updated .NET libraries to 9.0.8 for performance and security. Thanks  @snickler!
• Updated the spell check system to version 0.0.25 with better GitHub integration and SARIF reporting, plus fixed numerous spelling errors throughout the codebase including property names and documentation. Thanks  @jsoref!
• Cleaned up spelling check configuration to eliminate false positives and excessive noise that was appearing in every pull request, making the development process smoother.
• Replaced NuGet feed with Azure Artifacts for better package management.
• Implemented configurable UI test pipeline that can use pre-built official releases instead of building everything from scratch, reducing test execution time from 2+ hours.
• Replaced brittle pixel-by-pixel image comparison with perceptual hash (pHash) technology that's more robust to minor rendering differences - no more test failures due to anti-aliasing or compression artifacts.
• Reduced CI/fuzzing/UI test timeouts from 4 hours to 90 minutes, dramatically improving developer feedback loops and preventing long waits when builds get stuck.
• Standardized test project naming across the entire codebase and improved pipeline result identification by adding platform/install mode context to test run titles. Thanks  @khmyznikov!
• Added comprehensive UI test suites for multiple PowerToys modules including Command Palette, Advanced Paste, Peek, Text Extractor, and PowerRename - ensuring better reliability and quality.
• Enhanced UI test automation with command-line argument support, better session management, and improved element location methods using pattern matching to avoid failures from minor differences in exact matches.

Release Release v0.93 · microsoft/PowerToys