Win 10 Power Toys & QTTabBar

These are two useful productivity tools for windows users. The first has some handy tools that can be switched off until needed, the 2nd is something that I really want.

Power Toys

Power Toys is an interesting free Windows tweek app. There are some new features that look as if they can help productivity. I’d tried this a year or two back and it was buggy so I removed it. I’m looking forward to trying it again.

Github repository here with an overview of what it does and download here. Video overview here:

There are several add ons that you can switch on/off, so for regular daily use if you are not using file renamer, keep it switched off and save your RAM.

It has a few add ins that I think are quite nice, the Power Toys Run is a useful command to search programmes and start them. Also the image Resizer is something that I’ll be exploring more. I will play around with Fancy Zones again and see if I can come up with an arrangement for when I’m programming that will work for me. I think the Shortcut Guide is something I’ll keep live until I’ve found keys that I may use, Win + (+/-) for Zoom is not one I’ve used, so I’ll have to practice using those.

QTTabBar

This is something I’m very excited about. In old DOS times (386 and adding machines) I used to have norton commander for file management. This is a File Explorer enhancement that allows you to have TABS in a single instance of File Explorer. This will save me hours hunting between 5 open File Explorer tabs to find the folder I want.

Installing a bit odd

Main page & download here. You have to install the original programme first, then log out. After logging back in you then install the update. Weird but worth it. Help from Docs here.

What you get is:

There are a few Norton Commander lookalikes for new windows but I found I am so used to Windows File Explorer that I couldn’t go back to that type of interface.

ThQTTabBar on the the other hand is just enhancing Windows File Explorer with features that solve irritating issues such as multiple instances with tabs.

End comment

I’m really looking forward to getting up to speed with the enhanced Windows File Explorer and tweeking it to my needs.

The Power Toys will be used in time but none of the features leap out for immediate adoption but its good to know that there are a few toys that can be called up when I want them like the file renaer. I think I’ll witch it off from starting on startup for present and save some RAM, but I’ll have an icon on my task bar to fire up when needed. A bit like PantherTab for upper/lower case manipulation. Nice to know you have a tool there when you need it.