HOW I USE... Powertoys
Will Stapley reveals his favourite Powertoys tool, and how it keeps his cluttered Windows desktop organised
Having been a fan of Microsoft’s original Powertoys suite of tools (launched with Windows 95 and ended with XP), I was delighted when last year Microsoft announced its plans to resurrect the suite for Windows 10. And in a move that surprised me it also said it was going to make Powertoys open source.
It’s a decision that’s paid dividends - fast forward just a few months and the revitalised Powertoys has seven new tools, with many more updates planned (see the Powertoys schedule at www.snipca.com/35103).
To get the latest version, go to www.
snipca.com/35104, scroll down and under the Assets header download the ‘Powertoyssetup-0.18.2-x64.msi’ file. All tools are configured using the main Powertoys Settings window. You can also turn off any you don’t want from here.
Fancyzones is my favourite tool. It helps me organise the windows on my desktop by dragging them into zones. It’s similar to the Windows Snap tool that is activated when you drag a window to the far left or right of your desktop, but this is far more powerful. I’ve been able to set up a variety of desktop-layout options, but the one I use most comprises a large zone on the left (about two-thirds of the screen) in which I usually keep my browser, with two vertically arranged zones on the right-hand side (see main screenshot).
To snap a window into one of the zones, I simply hold down my Shift key while dragging it. The available zones will then appear, and I drop the window into the appropriate zone. And if I want a window to span both of the two smaller zones on the right, I simply drop it in the middle of them. To create your own layouts, and switch between them, press Windows key+’ (apostrophe).
I’ve tweaked some of the settings to get it working the way I want. For example, I’ve switched on ‘Override Windows Snap hotkeys…’, which lets me use the Alt and arrow keys to quickly place windows into my zones. I’ve also turned on ‘Move newly created windows to their last zone’, so if I open a new browser window, it will appear in the same zone as the current one.
Another Powertoys tool, Image Resizer, is particularly useful when emailing photos to people. Instead of attaching the originals to an email (even just a handful of photos will exceed the attachment limit of most email providers), I select the photos, right-click, select ‘Resize pictures’, then choose from a range of preset sizes (you can add your own sizes in the settings if needed). Image Resizer then saves the smaller versions as separate files, ready to be emailed.
One problem with editing and resizing images is that it’s not just their visual elements that are altered - the Date Modified timestamp will also be updated to reflect the date and time the photo was resized. This is a problem because most photo-viewing programs use the Date Modified stamp when determining the order they are displayed in. Happily, Image Resizer includes a ‘Use original date modified’ option in the settings - I’ve turned this on (see screenshot above), and I recommend you do the same.