# Microsoft PowerToys

49 Hacker News commenters recommended Microsoft PowerToys and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, open-source Microsoft utilities that add window management, launching, OCR and other power-user features Windows lacks. Common caveat: some features feel limited or slow to arrive.

## Why people recommend it

- Adds utilities Windows lacks (5 comments): "PowerToys still is on my "first software to install" list even in windows 11 as it adds so much useful features such as peek." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202582)) "It has many other niceties that should really have been baked into Windows in the first place" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49873793)) "Things like windows powertoys make the user experience pretty nice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45986930))
- Window management with FancyZones (5 comments): "If you use a window manager like powertoys on windows or rectangles on mac you can get a config that utilizes the screen." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49224682)) "while in windows I'm using powertoys and I can move/resize windows using any space inside a window" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581228)) "the desktop experience has been tolerable, especially with PowerToys and FancyZones" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471390))
- Free, first-party, open-source (5 comments): "a set of first party customization utilities, one of which is a pretty nice keyboard remapper" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48009043)) "This is straightforward with Powertoys (official config utility from Microsoft) on Windows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49884340)) "If you want tweaks that are a little more first party, there's always PowerToys" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230943))
- OCR, launcher and color picker (4 comments): "draw a rectangle around the text you want, and it OCRs it to your clipboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48062765)) "has a text extraction tool/shortcut. It also supports multiple languages." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45884032)) "I've been missing powertoys color picker when i switched to Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308165))

## What people warn about

- Heavy disk use and slowdowns (3 comments): "PowerToys update files were stored on the drive indefinitely, accumulating over 10 gb of disk space" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450966)) "every convenience program I added just noticeably slowed down my laptop" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798669)) "it's taking 1.17Gig of space" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46997827))
- New features slow or underwhelming (4 comments): "Microsoft PowerToys took 4 years to implement "select UI language" feature." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47464363)) "it's somewhat limited in my experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46547547)) "The new PowerToys are almost useless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248770))
- Not a true menu bar, copies Apple (2 comments): "it's not a menu bar, which can be seen pretty clearly from the screenshots" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46822055)) "Microsoft again copies something from Apple, this time 20 years late." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46822047))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Chris Titus WinUtil](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winutil.md): 17 recommend
- [Chris Titus Tech Windows Utility](https://hackerapproved.com/p/chris-titus-tech-windows-utility.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Microsoft PowerToys", https://hackerapproved.com/p/powertoys/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).