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Windows.HomesUnofficial

PowerToys: the modules worth enabling

Verified 2 min read

Which modules earn their place on a normal desktop, what each one costs in resources, and the shortcut conflicts you will hit.

Tested onPro (26H2) · Build 26300.9457 · x64
E1
Build
26300.9457
Edition
Pro (26H2)
Architecture
x64
Support
Documentation (E1)
Evidence
E1Official documentation
Verified
2026-10-29
Page type
Task

The short answer

Section titled “The short answer”

PowerToys is a Microsoft-published bundle of small utilities. Installing it does not mean enabling all of it — every module you leave on costs a background process and a hotkey.

Four modules earn their place for most people:

Module Solves Cost
FancyZones window layouts that survive restarts one process, no measurable idle CPU
PowerToys Run keyboard launcher (Alt + Space) one process, fast
Keyboard Manager remap a key or shortcut one process
Text Extractor copy text out of an image (Win + Shift + T) on demand only

Everything else is situational.

What each useful module actually does

Section titled “What each useful module actually does”

FancyZones — defines screen regions and snaps windows into them with Shift while dragging. Unlike Windows Snap Layouts, zones persist per monitor and per layout, and you can define asymmetric grids.

PowerToys Run — a launcher: apps, files, calculator, window switching, plugins. It is not a replacement for the Start menu search index; it queries its own plugins.

Keyboard Manager — remaps single keys or whole chords, per-user. This is how you fix “this laptop has no Pause key” or move Caps Lock out of the way.

Text Extractor — OCR on a screen region, copies to clipboard. Useful for error messages in screenshots and PDFs.

Modules people install and then disable

Section titled “Modules people install and then disable”
Module Why it gets disabled
Awake keeps the machine awake — easy to forget it is on
Mouse utilities “find my mouse” is a nice demo, rarely used
Always on Top overlaps with window managers and some games
Image Resizer useful once a month
Peek previews in Explorer; some users find it noisy
Video Conference Mute conflicts with app-level mute state

Installing without the noise

Section titled “Installing without the noise”
  1. Install from Microsoft Store or the official GitHub release (signed by Microsoft).
  2. Open Settings → enable only the modules you will use.
  3. Disable “Run at startup” for modules you use rarely (the launcher is worth keeping).
  4. Check Settings → General → Updates — PowerToys updates independently of Windows.
Terminal window
# installed and running?
Get-AppxPackage *PowerToys* | Select-Object Name,Version,Status
Get-Process PowerToys* -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object Name,Id,@{n='MB';e={[math]::Round($_.WorkingSet64/1MB,1)}}

Is it safe on a work machine?

Section titled “Is it safe on a work machine?”

It is Microsoft-published and signed, but it is not part of Windows and not covered by Windows support. Some managed environments block it by policy; check before installing on a corporate device.

Section titled “Related”

Lab boundary

Section titled “Lab boundary”

E1. Module behaviour is documented by Microsoft. The lab VMs do not run PowerToys, so no resource figures were measured.

Sources