No more switching back and forth between windows when you need a particular app pinned for quick reference! Microsoft’s open-source tool PowerToys is getting a new update that enables support for a few new features including “Always on Top” on both Windows 11 and Windows 10.
As the name suggests, PowerToys new feature lets you have an application window remain always on top on desktop, even when you open another app.
This is particularly helpful when you’ve multiple apps windows open and you want to keep a particular window always on top for quick access or reference. Windows Calculator is one of the few apps that have built-in support for “Always on Top” and the same feature is now available for all apps via PowerToys.
As you can see in the above screenshot, you can now easily have certain windows stay on top of others even when the app is not being actively used by you.
This new feature is rolling out with PowerToys version 0.53.1 and it can be activated with the Win + Ctrl + T shortcut, but it works only when PowerToys is running in the background.
That’s because PowerToys is not built into the operating system and users must allow the app to run in the background and on startup.
In our tests, we observed that PowerToys Always on Top tool works very well.
If you want to customize the visual outline, head to PowerToys settings. In settings, you can customize the outline of the app window and use a different colour or turn off the outlines entirely.
You can disable “Always on top” when you’re playing games or Windows’ Game Mode is activated. PowerToys advanced settings page even lets you exclude some apps from this new multitasking feature.
If you want to exit PowerToys Always on Top, close the app window or simply use the keyboard shortcut highlighted above.
PowerToys Run
PowerToys’ macOS Spotlight-like search feature called PowerToys Run is finally getting support for web searches. At the moment, PowerToys Run is limited to local search results, but it has been updated with support for web search.
PowerToys Run is faster than Windows Search and it is also able to perform web searches accurately. If you only want to use the web engine feature of PowerToys Run, just use ?? filter in your search queries.
When you’ve ?? in the search query, PowerToys will only show results from the web without sacrificing performance.
PowerToys v0.53 is available to download from GitHub and the Microsoft Store.
