The miracle of PowerToys, Microsoft’s last great Windows app

The way Microsoft turned an abandoned Windows 95 side project into a killer app for Windows 11 power users is a master class in delighting your superfans.

[Photos: Niels Laute/Microsoft; Donny Jiang/Unsplash]

Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today.

What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools, including a keyboard shortcut creator, an image-to-text extractor, and a better search bar than the one that’s built into Windows proper. PowerToys has become wildly popular among Windows power users, with more than 70 million downloads to date, but it’s also completely free, with no ads, Office upsells, or ham-fisted Copilot integrations.

Instead of directly monetizing PowerToys, Microsoft sees it as a way to build goodwill among software developers and Windows enthusiasts while also incubating ideas for the future of Windows. It’s like a hippie commune within the Microsoft empire, building cool software mostly for its own sake. When I ask Principal Product Manager Clint Rutkas if a business model might ever emerge from all this, he seems almost taken aback by the question.

“Nope,” he says. “Our goal is to empower power users to do more.”

The final deadline for Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators is Friday, March 27, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

Jared has been a freelance technology journalist for more than 15 years and is a regular contributor to Fast Company, PCWorld, and TechHive. His Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter has more than 30,000 subscribers, and his Advisorator tech advice newsletter is read by nearly 10,000 people each week More

© Fast Company