By Delia / Last update March 8, 2022

With the release of PowerToys 0.56.1 a few days ago, Microsoft has introduced a number of fixes and improvements. In the new version, Microsoft provides 128 layouts for FancyZones and a new way to trigger the "Find My Cursor" tool. And in the future, Microsoft plans to bring even more new features to PowerToys. According to a Pull Request on GitHub, Microsoft and other contributors are working on adding a new time and date tool along with improvements to the existing Window Walker module.

"Time and Date" is a new add-on for PowerToys Run. It displays the specified date and time in a variety of formats and copies each result to the clipboard. For example, you can ask PowerToys Run to display the current date and time, day of the week, month, year, etc. PowerToys will offer a range of customization options, such as including or excluding global results (you can trigger the plug-in with a predefined hotkey), displaying the time in seconds, or hiding error messages.

time and date

In addition to the new "Time and Date" module, PowerToys Run will get an improved Window Walker (a tool for finding running applications and windows using the launcher). The upcoming version will let you close windows and kill processes without having to launch Task Manager or switch to the application you need. In addition, if the user has more than one desktop, Window Walker will display the desktop name of the specified application next to its process ID.

time and date toggle on

In typical PowerToys fashion, the updated Window Walker will have a number of options for personalizing the user experience. These include the ability to display processes only from the visible desktop, end a process and its child processes, ask for confirmation before "killing" an application, personalize tooltips, and more.