PowerToys: A Tour, and Taking Back the Copilot Key

In September 2024 I wrote a short post called PowerToys new Workspaces feature. It assumed you already knew what PowerToys was. I called Workspaces “FancyZones on steroids” and moved on, which doesn’t help much if you’ve never heard of FancyZones either.

The other reason for this post is a key on my Surface Pro 11. It has a Copilot key, and I’ve got that key acting as Right Ctrl. Windows still keeps its own assignment for the key, pointing at the Microsoft 365 app, and you can see that in the registry:

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Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BrandedKey' |
    Select-Object BrandedKeyChoiceType, AppAumid

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BrandedKeyChoiceType : App
AppAumid             : Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub

Mine goes to Right Ctrl through Keyboard Manager instead, and on this keyboard that takes a different remap than most guides describe.

I bound it to Right Ctrl because Copilot is functionally garbage on a personal PC, and the Surface keyboard stole my right control key for this worthless key.

So this is the post I should have linked to back then: a tour for someone who hasn’t installed PowerToys, with most of the time spent on FancyZones, Mouse Without Borders, PowerRename, and Keyboard Manager, followed by what recent releases added. I checked the config and command output below on that Surface, running 0.102.3001, the current stable build as I write this (released October 27, 2026).

What you get when you install it

PowerToys is Microsoft’s free, open-source collection of utilities for Windows 10 and 11. There are thirty-odd of them now, and you turn each one on or off separately from a single settings app. Despite the toy in the name and a version number that still starts with zero, it gets regular feature releases: five between March and October of this year.

You need Windows 11 or Windows 10 version 2004 or newer, on x64 or ARM64. WinGet is the quickest install:

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winget install --id Microsoft.PowerToys --source winget

You can also grab it from the Microsoft Store or from the GitHub releases page, which offers a per-user installer and a machine-wide one for each architecture. Per-user lands in %LOCALAPPDATA%\PowerToys, and that’s what’s on my Surface. Settings live separately, under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\PowerToys, with a folder per utility.

Four utilities get their own sections below. These are a few of the others, so you can see the range:

Microsoft’s overview page has the full list.

FancyZones: windows that land where you drew them

Windows 11’s Snap layouts give you a menu of arrangements. FancyZones lets you draw your own and then snaps windows into them. That’s the feature I was excited about in that 2024 post, because I bounce between homelab, DMing, and gaming setups, and each one wants windows in different places.

By default, you hold Shift while dragging a window. Your zones appear as an overlay, and dropping the window on a zone resizes it to fit. You build layouts in the editor (Win+Shift+`), and you get two models to pick from. Grid starts with columns that you split and merge, and it scales with the screen. Canvas lets zones overlap and sit wherever you put them, like windows.

Those defaults are visible in the utility’s settings.json. This excerpt is from my Surface:

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"fancyzones_shiftDrag": {"value": true},
"fancyzones_overrideSnapHotkeys": {"value": false},
"fancyzones_quickLayoutSwitch": {"value": true},
"fancyzones_editor_hotkey": {"value": {"win": true, "ctrl": false, "alt": false, "shift": true, "code": 192, "key": ""}},

Walking through them: shiftDrag is the hold-Shift behavior. Turn it off and the zones appear as soon as you start any drag. With overrideSnapHotkeys set to false, Win+arrow keeps doing what Windows normally does. Set it to true and those keys move windows between your zones, so change that one if you’d like to stay on the keyboard. quickLayoutSwitch allows hotkeys for custom layouts, so once you’ve assigned a number in the editor, Win+Ctrl+Alt+number applies that layout. The editor hotkey stores virtual-key code 192, the backtick.

A few other moves are handy once you’re using it. Hover near the edge shared by two zones and you can drop a window across both of them, or hold Ctrl during the drag to select more. Stack several windows in one zone and Win+PgUp and Win+PgDn cycle through them.

FancyZones has a command-line tool now too. On my Surface, active shows that I’m running the stock layout:

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PS> PowerToys.FancyZones.CLI.exe active

=== Active FancyZones Layout(s) ===

Monitor 1: SDC4195
  Layout UUID: {B8A0B18F-988C-4FFA-A7E2-EB30FBF083C4}
  Layout Type: priority-grid
  Zone Count: 3
  Spacing: 16px
  Sensitivity Radius: 20px

The ls command lists every layout with an ASCII preview, but on my first try it stopped with an error:

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Error: File not found: layout-templates.json

The FancyZones folder held only applied-layouts.json and settings.json at that point. I opened the layout editor once, and when I checked again it had written layout-templates.json plus custom-layouts.json, default-layouts.json, layout-hotkeys.json, and editor-parameters.json. After that, ls worked:

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PS> PowerToys.FancyZones.CLI.exe ls

=== Built-in Template Layouts (6 total) ===

[T3] columns
    Zones: 3, Spacing: 16px

    Visual Preview:
    +---------+---------+---------+
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    |         |         |         |
    +---------+---------+---------+

I trimmed that to one of the six templates. If you script a fresh install, open the editor once first, or expect ls to fail.

Elevated windows are the first gotcha you’ll hit. Task Manager won’t snap unless PowerToys itself runs as administrator. The second one bites homelab people: Microsoft’s compatibility list includes Hyper-V Connection, VMware Workstation Player, RemoteApp, and Citrix as apps that can’t be zoned, with no workaround listed for most of them.

FancyZones also won’t launch anything. It only positions windows you’ve already opened, and that was my complaint in the Workspaces post: every context switch meant launching everything and swapping zones by hand. Workspaces handles the launching part if that’s your problem too.

Mouse Without Borders: one keyboard, up to four PCs

Mouse Without Borders lets one keyboard and mouse control up to four Windows computers over the network. Move the pointer off the edge of one screen and it shows up on the next machine, with the keyboard following along. Think of it as a software KVM without the video part, since each PC keeps its own monitors.

Mouse Without Borders is switched off on the Surface I pulled these settings from, so this section comes from Microsoft’s docs and release notes.

I use this when I’m testing configs on new machines and don’t have a KVM available to swap easily between my desktop and them.

In the utility’s settings on the first PC, select New Key to generate a security key. On the second PC, enter that key and the first computer’s name, then select Connect. After that you drag the device icons into the same arrangement as your desk, in a single row or a 2x2 grid.

You also get a shared clipboard and file transfer, within limits. Copy and paste or drag and drop works with one file at a time, up to 100 MB, and folders and multiple files don’t work at all. The documented workaround is to zip them first. Ctrl+Alt+number jumps straight to a specific machine, and there’s an optional shortcut that sends the same input to every machine at once. Broadcasting everything to the machines is fun, and I don’t have a KVM that replicates that aspect.

The settings you’ll want to look at early:

Without Use Service, you can’t control the lock screen or elevated windows on the far machine. With it, you’ve got a System-level service accepting remote input, and Microsoft’s docs call out the added risk of someone using it as an attack vector. Make that call per machine.

Two known issues are likely to catch sysadmins. If a Remote Desktop or VM window is focused full screen on the host, the keyboard might not follow the mouse to the next machine. The fix is to turn on Hide mouse at the screen’s edge or move focus first. And on a machine with no physical mouse attached, the pointer can be invisible, so you plug in a spare mouse or turn on Mouse Keys.

If you’re upgrading, 0.101 strengthened how these connections are encrypted, and the release notes say existing pairings are preserved “after every computer is updated.” I’d update all of your paired machines together. Mouse Without Borders is also left out of the Microsoft DSC support I cover later, because its settings contain the connection key.

PowerRename: bulk renames with a preview

Select some files in File Explorer, right-click, and choose Rename with PowerRename. A window opens with search and replace fields, a list of options, and a live preview showing each original name beside its new one. Clear the checkbox on any file you want to leave alone. If you get it wrong anyway, Ctrl+Z in Explorer undoes the rename.

Plain search and replace covers most days. With Use regular expressions on, you get capture groups. This one from Microsoft’s docs flips a date in a file name, turning 29-03-2020 into 2020-03-29:

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Search for:   (\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})
Replace with: $3-$2-$1

Each set of parentheses captures part of the match, and $1 through $3 put those parts back in a new order. The docs say Match all occurrences has to be selected for those variables to work, so turn that on before you decide your regex is broken. PowerRename uses ECMAScript regex by default. The Use Boost library setting adds features like lookbehind.

If you live in a terminal, you already have an equivalent, and -WhatIf is your preview:

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Get-ChildItem *.pdf |
    Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '(\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})', '$3-$2-$1' } -WhatIf

One difference: -replace is .NET regex, so a pattern doesn’t always behave the same in both tools.

Counters and dates are where PowerRename gets ahead of a one-liner. With Enumerate items on, this replacement adds a padded counter:

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Search for:   a
Replace with: Image_${padding=4;increment=2;start=10}_

Reading the braces left to right: four digits with leading zeros, count up by two, start at ten. Only the matched a gets replaced, so the rest of each name survives:

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a.jpg    ->  Image_0010_.jpg
ab.jpg   ->  Image_0012_b.jpg
abc.jpg  ->  Image_0014_bc.jpg

Date tokens such as $YYYY, $MM, and $DD come from the file’s creation date, and that’s a trap. Copying a file normally gives the copy a new creation date, so a folder of copied photos can all end up named for the day you copied them. For images, switch the combo box to the EXIF option and use the metadata tokens, with regular expressions on so ^ anchors the match to the start of the name:

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Search for:   ^IMG_
Replace with: $DATE_TAKEN_YYYY-$DATE_TAKEN_MM-$DATE_TAKEN_DD-

I ran it on a folder of five test JPEGs, all created in the same minute, four carrying a date-taken value and one with no EXIF at all. The combo box is labeled Metadata source for replacement, and with it on EXIF Metadata the preview filled in the dates from the photos themselves:

The fifth file came out as $DATE_TAKEN_YYYY-$DATE_TAKEN_MM-$DATE_TAKEN_DD-0005.jpg on disk. When a token can’t be filled, PowerRename writes the token text into the name instead of skipping the file, so a dollar sign in the Renamed column means a photo with no EXIF. Clear that file’s checkbox before you apply.

Other tokens cover lens, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, GPS coordinates, and author. If you tried the GPS or author tokens before and got bad results, 0.102 fixed both.

Keyboard Manager and the Copilot key

Keyboard Manager remaps keys and shortcuts system-wide or per app. A remap can send another key, a shortcut, or typed text, and a shortcut can also launch a program or open a URI. It takes effect immediately, with no restart. The catch is that it only works while PowerToys is running with Keyboard Manager enabled.

The entire remap file on my Surface, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\PowerToys\Keyboard Manager\default.json, is one line:

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{"remapKeys":{"inProcess":[{"originalKeys":"93","newRemapKeys":"163"}]},"remapKeysToText":{"inProcess":[]},"remapShortcuts":{"global":[],"appSpecific":[]},"remapShortcutsToText":{"global":[],"appSpecific":[]}}

Keys are stored as virtual-key codes, which aren’t fun to read. PowerToys.DSC.exe will translate them for you:

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PS> PowerToys.DSC.exe export --resource 'profile' --module KeyboardManager
{"profile":{"keys":[{"from":"Apps","to":"RCtrl"}],"shortcuts":[]}}

That makes 93 the Apps key and 163 Right Ctrl. On this Surface’s keyboard, the Copilot key is the Apps key, so that one line is my entire Copilot remap. It sits under remapKeys, the single-key list, and most guides will tell you to stay away from that list.

What the key sends

There’s no Copilot keycode for the key to send. It sends something else, and on most keyboards that’s a shortcut: Left Win + Left Shift + F23, and Microsoft’s docs list Win+C as another form you might see. The classic editor split remaps into Remap a key and Remap a shortcut, and the key version only holds one key, so recording the Copilot key there kept the last thing it saw: F23. That catches part of what the key sends, and the results get confusing fast. Forum threads are full of people stuck right there. The editor that ships now has one Add new remapping dialog, and its Trigger box records a single key or a whole shortcut in the same place, so that trap is gone. You still need to know which of the two your keyboard sends.

My Surface keyboard is the exception. Its Copilot key sends Apps, one ordinary key. Before you follow anyone’s instructions, press your key in the recorder and read what shows up. On mine it reads Apps/Menu:

I didn’t take the recorder’s word for it. With Keyboard Manager switched off, a short script polling GetAsyncKeyState, Watch-KeyState.ps1 in my code repo, logged what applications see while I tapped the key and then held it with C:

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   9.916s  DOWN  0x5D Apps
   9.966s  UP    0x5D Apps
  18.633s  DOWN  0x5D Apps
  18.988s  DOWN  0x43 C
  19.157s  UP    0x43 C
  19.449s  UP    0x5D Apps

Virtual-key 0x5D is Apps, on its own, both times. Whatever your recorder shows is what you remap. If it’s three keys, the steps below cover that. Mine is one key, and the rest of the steps are the same.

Try the Windows setting first

You might not need PowerToys at all. Windows has its own setting, Customize Copilot key on keyboard, and scripts can jump to it with ms-settings:personalization-textinput-copilot-hardwarekey. The URI still says Personalization, but on this Surface, running 25H2 build 26200.9711, it opens Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard, in the Shortcuts and hotkeys card. The menu has also grown. A week before I wrote this section, it offered Search or an app. Now it lists Copilot, Context menu, Right control, Search, and Open an app:

The app option has a big restriction: the app has to be MSIX packaged and signed, and it has to show up in the picker. Your favorite classic Win32 tool probably won’t be there. PowerToys 0.102 added one interesting entry to that picker. You can pick Command Palette as the key’s app, and pressing the key again hides the palette, so a single key toggles your launcher. That’s probably the right answer for a lot of people.

Right control looked like it made the rest of this section pointless, so I picked it. Choosing it writes BrandedKeyChoiceType : RightControl to the registry key from the top of the post, and on this Surface it changed nothing. With Keyboard Manager off, the key still arrived as Apps, tapped or held, which is the log in the section above. Windows only rewrites a key it recognizes as the Copilot key, and this keyboard never sends one. If yours sends the Win, Shift, F23 chord, this setting is where I’d start, and I’d be glad to hear whether Right control holds as a modifier there, because I can’t test it on a keyboard that sends Apps. If yours sends Apps like mine, Keyboard Manager is the only route I’ve found.

These are the routes side by side:

Remapping it in Keyboard Manager

Use this when you want a classic app, a URL, a different keystroke, or when Windows can’t see your key.

1. Open PowerToys Settings, go to Keyboard Manager, and turn it on. Don’t assume it’s already on, since one forum poster found it wasn’t enabled by default.
2. Select Open editor on that page, or press the shortcut shown beside it. Mine is Win+Shift+Q. Since 0.100, new installs get the redesigned WinUI 3 editor by default, and the page keeps a Switch back to the classic editor link under it.
3. Select New. The Add new remapping dialog has a Trigger column and an Action column.
4. Select the Trigger box, which reads Press to start recording keys, and press the Copilot key itself without typing anything. On most keyboards it should fill in Win (Left), Shift (Left), and F23. On mine it fills in Apps/Menu. Whatever it shows is what you’re remapping, and the box takes a single key or a shortcut without you choosing between them.
5. Pick the Action: Remap to key or shortcut, Insert text, Open URL, Open app, or Disable key or shortcut, then record or choose the target.
6. Allow chords is checked by default, and Only apply to a specific app scopes the remap to one program. The Condition menu offers Always or Alone (tap). Save.

I walked those labels through on 0.102.3001 with a single-key trigger. The classic editor’s Exact Match checkbox didn’t appear for it, and the DSC resource below still has an exactMatch property, so it may surface once the trigger is a shortcut.

When you pick a program, you also choose its elevation and what happens if it’s already running: show its window, start another instance, do nothing, close it, or end the task. Show window turns the key into a summon button for a single app.

In default.json this lands under remapShortcuts.global. By my math, originalKeys should read 91;160;134, the codes for Left Win, Left Shift, and F23, though my keyboard never produces that entry.

Holding it down like Ctrl

The Copilot key took the place of Right Ctrl on many laptops, and getting that back is a common request. Windows now offers Right control in its own setting, and on a keyboard that sends the chord, that’s where I’d try first. In Keyboard Manager, on keyboards that send the three-key shortcut, it’s also the shakiest remap. Mapping a single press to a program or URI is a clean fit, but acting as a held modifier means the remap has to look like Ctrl for as long as you hold it, while the keyboard is sending three keys. Issue #31979 and issue #39747 describe the symptoms: combinations that work only some of the time, or a key that behaves like Ctrl+Shift+Win. A leftover single-key F23 remap can interfere too, so delete any of those first.

Those reports are from 0.79 and 0.91. I didn’t find a fix called out for this in the recent release notes, so test your own shortcuts before you trust it, and I’d start with a program or URI binding.

My Surface sidesteps that, because the remap has one key to replace instead of three. Holding it for Ctrl+C and my other usual shortcuts works. Turn Keyboard Manager off and the key goes straight back to Apps, Windows setting or no Windows setting, so the fix lasts only as long as PowerToys is running.

The other limits apply to any remap. It doesn’t work at the sign-in screen, and it doesn’t reach an elevated window unless PowerToys is elevated too. Microsoft’s docs also say to avoid Keyboard Manager while gaming because the interception can hurt frame rates, so if you game on that PC you’ll want it turned off for those sessions.

Deploying the remap with DSC

If you manage more than one machine, this part is new and useful. PowerToys 0.102 added a Microsoft.PowerToys/KeyboardManagerProfile resource that uses readable key names:

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$schema: https://aka.ms/dsc/schemas/v3/bundled/config/document.json
resources:
  - name: Rebind the Copilot key
    type: Microsoft.PowerToys/KeyboardManagerProfile
    properties:
      profile:
        shortcuts:
          - from: "LWin+LShift+F23"
            exactMatch: true
            runProgram:
              filePath: "%LOCALAPPDATA%\\Microsoft\\WindowsApps\\wt.exe"
              ifRunning: showWindow

The from value is the Copilot key’s shortcut, exactMatch is the same Exact Match setting from the editor, and runProgram starts Windows Terminal, or brings up its window if it’s already open. Swap in whatever you want, or use to for a keystroke and openUri for a link.

Applying this replaces the whole remapping profile. Any remap that isn’t in the document gets removed, so applying this as written would wipe out my Copilot remap. It wouldn’t even match my keyboard, because that from describes the three-key shortcut. My equivalent is the keys entry from the earlier export, { from: Apps, to: RCtrl }. Run export first. I didn’t apply this document on my Surface for those reasons. I only ran the read-only test operation with a shorter version of the same from value, which accepted the key names and reported the machine out of its desired state.

Testing that from the shell turned up a quoting gotcha. The docs show single-quoted JSON passed to --input. PowerShell 7.6.9 handled it fine, while Windows PowerShell 5.1 stripped the double quotes on the way to the executable:

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Invalid JSON input: 'p' is an invalid start of a property name. Expected a '"'. LineNumber: 0 | BytePositionInLine: 1.

PowerShell’s native argument passing also gave me trouble in Rolling my own ssh-copy-id for Windows. On 5.1, escape the quotes as \", or skip it and use pwsh. The docs’ examples also name that variable $input, which is one of PowerShell’s automatic variables, so I’d pick a different name.

For the Copilot key alone, a managed fleet may be better off with the SetCopilotHardwareKey policy, since it needs no background app. It’s in both Group Policy and the Policy CSP, so you can reach it from Intune.

What recent releases added

PowerToys ships fast enough that a tutorial from last year can feel like a different product. This is the short version of the last five feature releases, with dates from GitHub:

I’d rank these by how much they change your day, and that order doesn’t match the version numbers.

Command Palette as the front door

If you try one utility beyond the four above, try this one. Press Win+Alt+Space and type to launch apps, run commands, search files and the web, do math, reach Windows settings, install apps through WinGet, and switch windows. Microsoft’s docs describe it as the evolution of PowerToys Run, the older launcher, which is still in the box.

This year’s releases filled it out. 0.98 added a Dock, a customizable bar along a screen edge, and 0.100 gave each monitor its own. 0.100 also added an Extension Gallery so you can browse and install extensions from inside the palette. 0.101 brought a compact mode that opens as a small search box and expands only when it has results, and 0.102 put a quick-access shelf of pinned commands under that box, on Alt+1 through Alt+9, along with the Copilot key support I covered earlier.

Scripting and deployment

0.102 added or extended command-line tools for Advanced Paste, Light Switch, Settings, Peek, and PowerDisplay, and put the FancyZones, Image Resizer, File Locksmith, and PowerDisplay commands on your PATH. The Settings tool is small:

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PS> PowerToys.Settings.CLI.exe --help
Commands:
  list              List all PowerToys modules and their enabled status
  status <module>   Show one PowerToys module's enabled status
  enable <module>   Enable a PowerToys module
  disable <module>  Disable a PowerToys module

According to the release notes, it can change those states while PowerToys is closed and can output JSON. Add the DSC profile resource from the last section and you can build a machine’s PowerToys setup from a config file. The 0.103 development previews carry this further with a Workspaces command that lists and launches saved workspaces.

Keyboard Manager’s rebuild

The new editor arrived as a preview in 0.98 with one unified view and per-remap toggles, so you can disable an entry without deleting it. It became the default in 0.100. Then 0.102 added search, filters, and bulk delete for long lists, plus a searchable key picker that can select keys your keyboard doesn’t have.

The same release added tap-alone remaps. Tap a key by itself and it triggers one action, while the key still works normally in shortcuts and mouse combinations. If you’ve ever wanted Caps Lock to be Esc on a tap and still work with other keys, that’s the idea.

Smaller utilities you’ll keep

Shortcut Guide was rebuilt from the ground up in 0.100 as a side pane that detects the active app and shows its shortcuts, and 0.101 added search plus an option to trigger it by holding the Windows key. Window Hopper, also from 0.101, works like Alt+Tab but stays inside the current app, on Alt+backtick by default. Grab And Move from 0.99 lets you drag a window from anywhere by holding Alt and left-clicking, or resize with Alt and right-click. Power Display, also 0.99, puts brightness, contrast, and volume for your monitors in a tray flyout. 0.102 added CursorHide, to hide the pointer while you type or after inactivity, and Mouse Button Lock, to keep a button held after a long press for long drags and accessibility.

FancyZones got two additions of its own: 0.101’s rotation mode moves windows across monitors with Alt+X and an arrow key, and 0.102 lets you scroll the mouse wheel during a drag to change layouts. Both are off by default.

Local AI in Advanced Paste

0.101 added on-device transformations through Phi Silica, on supported Windows devices, so an Advanced Paste action can use a local model with no cloud endpoint or API key. You can mix local and online providers per action, or hide the AI section altogether if you don’t want it. I haven’t tried this, even though my Surface is the kind of hardware it’s aimed at, since Advanced Paste is turned off there. I just haven’t made the leap to use tokens on a paste command.

The plumbing

None of this makes for a good screenshot, but you’ll benefit from it. 0.100 moved to .NET 10, cut the installer by 15%, and started backing up config files before updates so settings can be restored if corruption is detected. 0.101 added a choice of Stable or Insider update channels under Settings > General, with Stable as the default, and it verifies downloaded update installers before launching them. The latest patch, 0.102.3001, fixes crashes in File Locksmith and Quick Accent, so that’s the stable build to be on right now.

Where my Surface landed

After all of that research, my own Keyboard Manager file still holds one line, Apps to Right Ctrl, and FancyZones is on the stock three-zone layout. The Copilot key on this Surface is a Ctrl key.

Related reading

• PowerToys new Workspaces feature
• Rolling my own ssh-copy-id for Windows
• WMIC Is Gone. Here Is What To Use Instead