These 7 New Microsoft PowerToys Utilities Are Worth Trying

Microsoft’s PowerToys is a suite of tools that adds excellent features to your PC. PowerToys is free, but the way Microsoft keeps adding new tools, it feels like it should cost money. These latest PowerToys tools are just as exciting as the last.

Mouse Without Borders

This tool lets you use the same keyboard and mouse combination with different computers. You can control up to four computers using Mouse Without Borders, and the tool lets you share clipboard data and files with all machines.

Peek

If you’re switching from macOS to Windows, you may be missing the former’s excellent file preview option. On a Mac, you can select any file and press Spacebar for a quick preview, and Peek brings the same functionality to Windows. You can select any file on your PC and press Ctrl + Space to check it out. If there are multiple files in a folder, you can press the left or the right arrow keys to flip through multiple previews quickly.

Paste as Plain Text

As the name suggests, this PowerToys utility strips formatting from anything you’ve copied to the clipboard. This makes it easy to paste unformatted text in any app. The default shortcut is Windows + Ctrl + V.

Mouse Jump

When you’re using a large ultra-wide monitor, or if you have a multi-monitor setup, you can use Mouse Jump to make the mouse pointer travel long distances quickly. It creates a small preview of the entire screen and allows you to quickly move the pointer to any part of the display.

File Locksmith

If you’ve ever encountered an error preventing you from deleting files because they’re being used by an unspecified program, File Locksmith can help by identifying which processes are using any given file. You can right-click on any file and select What’s using this file? to use this tool.

Registry Preview

This one is for power users only. Those who find themselves editing Windows Registry files often can use Registry Preview to open any .reg files (you’ll see a tree view of which files are being edited), and see individual values in this registry file as well.

Hosts File Editor

Whenever you visit a website on the internet, your PC checks its hosts file to see which IP address it’s connecting to. You can edit this file if you need to block certain websites on the computer, among other tasks. The Hosts File Editor tool in PowerToys makes this easy by providing a neat interface to edit this file, instead of a text-only file that you’d normally open with Notepad.