One of the best free official Windows 11/10 apps, PowerToys, to get a major upgrade soon

There may be a lot of reasons to dislike or even hate Windows 11; however, PowerToys is not one of them as it is one of the very cool official apps or features on the OS, among others like Group Policy editor, that really lets enthusiasts have their way with the OS.

As the name suggests, PowerToys is made for power users on Windows 11/10, and it packs a whole host of features and utilities which allow customization of the operating system. Originally inspired by the classic PowerToys from the Windows 95 era, the modern version offers a wide range of tools that streamline everyday workflows and provide advanced functionality for enthusiast users.

Among its most popular features are Always on Top, Advanced Paste, Peek, or FancyZones, the last of which allows users to create custom window layouts, and PowerToys Run, a fast launcher for apps, files, and commands. Other utilities include a color picker, bulk file renaming, image resizing directly from File Explorer, and a keyboard manager for remapping keys and shortcuts. Plus additional tools such as Awake, File Explorer add-ons, mouse utilities, and a shortcut guide further expand its usefulness.

PowerToys is an open-source project and one of the contributors of the applications, Noraa Junker, has published a blog post today highlighting a major change he has been working on. While still labelled as WIP or work in progress, Junker is porting PowerToys Runner from C++ to C#.

If you are wondering why, Junker has explained it in his blog post in some detail.

Junker notes that the runner (not to be confused with PowerToys Run which we mentioned above), known as powertoys.exe, is essentially responsible for starting modules based on user settings, managing their processes, and piping commands between the settings interface and modules. Until now, these functions relied on multiple C++ projects exporting DLLs, and this approach has been described as messy, over-engineered, and difficult to maintain.

Thus, Junker says that the existing C++ code base has proven inflexible, which in turn slows down feature development and also discourages new contributors. By moving to C#, the project maintainers and contributors can expect faster builds, simpler and easier debugging, and a more accessible code base for the open-source community.

With this redesign, each module will consist of a single class implementing the IPowerToyModule interface. In simple terms, this consolidation should reduce the number of projects required, which in turn streamlines compilation and should help eliminate redundant code for handling configuration files. In essence, Junker is promising that a lot of the underlying code complexity will be significantly reduced as a result.

If you are wondering about an ETA for this, Junker notes that the pull request for the runner refactor is nearly complete, though they add that the finalization depends on the upgrade to .NET 10, after which the new runner will be updated and merged. So for users, while the changes are largely under the hood, they can lead to smoother updates and potentially quicker delivery of new features.

You can view the pull request here on the official GitHub repo.

Source: Round checkbox (spotted by Deskmodder)

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Posted Saturday 14 March 2026 at 11:04 am AEST (my time).

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