PowerToys Preview v0.101.2242.0 Adds Monitor Rotation and Overhauls Command Palette Search
Another day, another PowerToys preview. It's a small but impactful release. FancyZones finally gets a monitor window rotation feature. The Command Palette gets a serious search ranking overhaul. And the dock bands for Performance Monitor get some long-needed reliability fixes.
This is build v0.101.2242.0. It's the latest in the preview channel, so you'll need to opt in to get it. But for people running multiple monitors, the new FancyZones feature is arguably worth the switch.
FancyZones gets rotation
For a long time, FancyZones has handled window placement. But moving windows between monitors? That's always been a separate workflow. Now, you can rotate them.
The feature is opt-in and disabled by default. You'll find it under the FancyZones > Windows settings. You hold a configurable hotkey to enter rotation mode. The overlay goes dark, showing your monitors with numbered content. Directional hints appear to show where the active window will go.
From there, you use arrow keys to shift windows left or right. It handles negative work areas and different screen resolutions without throwing a fit.
The implementation comes from community contributor Lucas Martins. It's a production-quality addition with proper edge-case handling. The code review process was thorough, including Copilot-assisted fixes for modifier tracking. Microsoft wants to be cautious here, hence the toggle. If you find it useful, you'll need to enable it manually.
Command Palette gets smarter
The other major effort in this release is under the hood. Michael Jolley consolidated eight prior pull requests into one mega-PR. It's a comprehensive upgrade to the search ranking system.
The old system relied on a simple list-position heuristic. The new system uses real time-decayed frecency. Windows expire faster, with a 3-day half-life. Frequency is logged as log2(uses). The history store capacity also doubled to 500 entries.
Jolley also added per-provider search weights. You can nudge results within their tier by setting a weight to Lower, Normal, or Higher. It breaks near-ties without crossing tier boundaries. The UI is a simple ComboBox in the ExtensionPage settings.
Performance got a bump too. Heavy scoring and sorting now run off the main lock. The app scoring uses parallel partitions on separate threads. Stale keystrokes are dropped via an atomic swap. The result is faster re-ranking as you type.
Privacy-conscious users can enable opt-in telemetry. The queries log length, result count, and latency. Raw query text, titles, and paths are never logged.
Dock reliability and .NET updates
Jiří Polášek fixed a bug where Performance Monitor dock bands would get stuck showing ??? after a restart. The fix serializes initialization and cleanup to prevent race conditions. It's a solid cleanup for the dock lifecycle.
The build also bumps the .NET runtime to 10.0.11. The CI pipeline is pinned to SDK 10.0.303. It's routine maintenance, but it keeps the toolchain aligned with current servicing packages.
Download and Install
This is a preview release. It's intended for users who don't mind occasional instability. You can grab the installers directly from the GitHub release page.
- Per-user install (x64): PowerToysUserSetup-0.101.2242.0-x64.exe
- Per-user install (ARM64): PowerToysUserSetup-0.101.2242.0-arm64.exe
- Machine-wide install (x64): PowerToysSetup-0.101.2242.0-x64.exe
- Machine-wide install (ARM64): PowerToysSetup-0.101.2242.0-arm64.exe
Keep in mind that these installers are SHA-256 verified. You can check the hashes against the release manifest. Head here to the official GitHub release notes for the full changelog.
