> It was first introduced for Windows 95,
I had no idea it was there for that long!
Honestly, from their perspective it probably makes sense to keep it separate from the main OS if they like keeping it open source.
I had no idea it was there for that long!
Honestly, from their perspective it probably makes sense to keep it separate from the main OS if they like keeping it open source.
The genesis of PowerToys was to provide a way to create utilities for power users that could be quickly iterated in public. When it’s part of the core OS, that makes updates/iteration harder (hence, why Windows Terminal, WSL2 beta, calculator, Notepad and some other components have moved to getting updates in the Microsoft Store separate from the main OS. So you can run an older IT mandated version of Windows but still ostensibly have a newer version of a certain component), and with stuff like PowerToys, the intended audience is different than the standard OS user, who may not be comfortable with things that can change more frequently.
That said, the feedback from PowerToys and some of those components has been upstreamed back into core Windows.
The improved window management stuff in Windows 11 is a less-advanced version of Fancy Zones (FZ has more features and options), and the same is true for the universal mute button in Windows 11, that started out as a PowerToys feature.
(Disclosure: former Microsoft employee (currently at GitHub) who knows the PowerToys team well)
The first release of the current applicaiton was 2019. The wiki article is quite detailed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys
[1]http://misweb.cbi.msstate.edu/~rpearson/tips/tweakui.html