Microsoft PowerToys 0.15 focuses on quality improvements [Update]

[harlan4096]

It's been almost three months since the last major update to Microsoft's PowerToys, but today, version 0.15 is out. Microsoft has taken the extra time to deliver a slew of quality updates that promise to make the overall experience better.
 
One of the big additions in this release is the ability for PowerToys to automatically check for updates and warn the user when a new version is available. Additionally, you no longer need to run the app as an administrator every time. Here's the changelog:

• Make you aware there is a new version from within PowerToys
  
• Removed requirement to always 'run as admin'
  
• Added almost 300 unit tests to increase stability and prevent regressions.
  
• Resolved almost 100 issues
  
• Made .NET Framework parts of the source run faster with NGEN
  
• Improved for how we store data locally
  
• Increased FancyZones compatibility with applications
  

The team has also worked on documentation, cleaning up the list of issues on GitHub, and drafting up a number of documents. A strategy for version 1.0 has been outlined here, and specs for a launcher and a keyboard manager have been published in the respective links.
 
If you're interested, you can download the latest version from the GitHub releases page. Microsoft warns that you'll need to reapply your FancyZones layout after upgrading, but the custom zone sets have been preserved.
 
Update: Microsoft has released a patch that updates PowerToys to 0.15.1 to fix a bug where FancyZonesEditor crashes on launch. You can grab the new version here.
...

Continue Reading