Last Updated on October 12, 2021 by Mathew Diekhake

Microsoft PowerToys has been rebooted and is now an open source project available on GitHub. Microsoft PowerToys is a play on the Windows 95 era PowerTools project.

The new PowerToys project is designed to be a set of utilities for power users to customize their Windows 10 experience for higher productivity.

As the Windows operating system gets older, Microsoft developers are always looking for new ways to make things more efficient, but the thought is usually for all users and primarily everyday users. PowerToys will aim to provide more efficiency, only this time around for power users.

For now, the open source developers are working on the Maximize to new desktop widget and Windows key shortcut guide utilities.

The Maximize to new desktop widget (MTND widget) utility shows another icon when you hover the cursor over the Maximize icon which creates a new desktop window and sends the app to that new desktop.

The Windows key shortcut guide utility shows a full list of keyboard shortcuts when you hold down the Windows logo key by itself for more than a second. This means power users will no longer have to try remembering all the different shortcuts, something many of them will greatly appreciate. Most power users have far too many other things on their minds, and that makes trying to remember key combinations a dubious—and most importantly, inefficient—task.

Read more: GitHub – microsoft/PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity