SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives Learn more →
PowerToys Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to PowerToys
-
-
InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
-
ShareX
ShareX is a free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and share it with a single press of a key. It also allows uploading images, text or other types of files to many supported destinations you can choose from.
-
Windows Terminal
The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!
-
-
-
-
VideoLAN Client (VLC)
VLC media player - All pull requests are ignored, please use MRs on https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc
-
-
winget-cli
WinGet is the Windows Package Manager. This project includes a CLI (Command Line Interface), PowerShell modules, and a COM (Component Object Model) API (Application Programming Interface).
-
-
-
-
-
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better PowerToys alternative or higher similarity.
PowerToys discussion
PowerToys reviews and mentions
Posts with mentions or reviews of PowerToys.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-03-19.
- PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity
-
PowerToys Command Palette Utility
What's interesting about this vs. PowerToys Run is the "extensibility" aspect. Developers can create custom extensions that users can add using winget/MS Store. This feels very similar to Raycast and is something I miss whenever I switch to Windows. I know Raycast team is working to add Windows support but it's nice to see some competition.
Docs about creating an extension: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/command-...
Release notes: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.90.0
-
Memory Safety for Web Fonts
I've recently been learning about how fonts render based on subpixel layouts in monitor panels. Windows assumes that all panels use RGB layout, and their ClearType software will render fonts with that assumption in mind. Unfortunately, this leads to visible text fringing on new display types, like the alternative stripe pattern used on WOLED monitors, or the triangular pattern used on QD-OLED.
Some third-party tools exist to tweak how ClearType works, like MacType[1] or Better ClearType Tuner[2]. Unfortunately, these tools don't work in Chrome/electron, which seems to implement its own font rendering. Reading this, I guess that's through FreeType.
I hope that as new panel technologies start becoming more prevalent, that somebody takes the initiative to help define a standard for communicating subpixel layouts from displays to the graphics layer, which text (or graphics) rendering engines can then make use of to improve type hinting. I do see some efforts in that area from Blur Busters (the UFO Test guy), but still not much recognition from vendors.
Note I'm still learning about this topic, so please let me know if I've misspoken about any points here.
[1] https://github.com/snowie2000/mactype
[2] https://github.com/bp2008/BetterClearTypeTuner
[3] https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595
-
Apple's Software Quality Crisis: When Premium Hardware Meets Subpar Software
It's not just the OS itself, where some of the slowness can at least be explained by the silo-ed nature of development and the large amount of moving parts. But even when MS gives a small-ish team free reign and a fresh start, the software is just agonizingly slow and buggy.
Example 1: new PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/
The FancyZones "window snap" UI takes upwards of half a second to activate when dragging a window and the Zone Editor is at around 5s. All in all it is only very slightly less buggy than 3rd party tiling WMs like komorebic.
The PowerToysRun utility input is extremely variable, takes between 1 and 20(!) seconds. A lot of the plugins shipped with it simply don't work or have no suggestions/hints once you enter their prefix. The search relies on WindowsSearch, which is about 500x slower than https://github.com/sharkdp/fd and has not improved since Win7. Who cares, nobody ever searches for files, right? As a whole, PTRun is simply worse than https://github.com/Flow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher which uses the same UI kit as far as I can see. WTF?
-
M4 MacBook Pros use a quantum dot (QD) film rather than a red KSF phosphor film
Yeah think its a ClearType issue[0] specifically then
[0]https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/25595
-
Show HN: Supercharge Your Mac
It's active again, they've open sourced and reinvested in it with new utilities.
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
- PowerToys: Boost Your Windows Productivity with These Essential Utilities
-
How to Use Color Picker in Windows 11 using PowerToys?
You can download the latest version of PowerToys from the official GitHub repository. Alternatively, my brother wrote a helpful guide on how to download and install the PowerToys tool on your Windows 11 PC.
-
My Impression of Open Source
Research on Trending GitHub Repository As this is my first blog post on dev.to, so I did some research on a trending Git Hub repository, and provide insights into its usefulness and features. I chose to explore Microsoft's PowerToys repository, which has gained significant traction in the developer community.
-
Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?
+1 for power toys
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
also, Cygwin if you need it
-
A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 16 May 2025
Stats
Basic PowerToys repo stats
726
118,502
9.8
1 day ago
microsoft/PowerToys is an open source project licensed under MIT License which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of PowerToys is C#.
Sponsored
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com
Review ★★★★★ 10/10