

Later, after a lull for a few years, the company eventually released another update to PowerToys in 2019.

A few years later, it released its second iteration with Windows XP, as a separate download. Microsoft debuted the first version of PowerToys with Windows 95. The utility is intended to help those with visual field impairments not lose track of the mouse cursor.Microsoft PowerToys is a collection of utilities for Windows operating systems to help you perform operations more efficiently and streamline your workflow. Thanks to this utility, the key combination CTRL+Alt+P will place a crosshair over the mouse pointer. The final feature added in this PowerToys update is a new mouse utility co-developed with the accessibility team at Microsoft. The second add-on generates thumbnails in File Explorer for the STL file format, which is a common 3D file format. This add-on is powered by Monaco Editor, which is the code editor for Microsoft Visual Studio Code. The first add-on introduces plain text view support for 150 different file extensions in File Explorer’s preview pane. Two of these features are File Explorer add-ons. The latest release of PowerToys comes with performance improvements and bug fixes, but it also introduces three new features. Since then, the team and community behind this open source tool have brought additional features to the tool suite and a makeover for Windows 11. That is until Microsoft rebooted the project in 2019 and released in on GitHub for Windows 10. However, after Windows XP, PowerToys went the way of the dodo bird.

Among these tools was TweakUI, which exposed system utility settings that were previously accessible only by modifying the Windows Registry. In the age of Windows 95, Microsoft introduced PowerToys, a set of tools for Windows power users to tweak to their heart's content.
