Microsoft shipped PowerToys 0.100 on June 9, 2026, a release that marks a major leap for the Windows utility suite. The update lands with a fully rebuilt Shortcut Guide, a new Extension Gallery for the Command Palette, long-awaited multi-monitor support for the Dock, substantial reliability work under Power Display, and a migration to .NET 10. It’s available now for Windows 10 (version 2004 and later) and Windows 11 via GitHub releases and the Microsoft Store.

The jump from 0.99 to 0.100 isn’t just a number. It represents one of the largest feature drops in PowerToys history, blending user interface overhauls with foundational architecture changes. Power users who rely on the suite for productivity will find concrete improvements in daily workflows, while the open-source community gains a modernized codebase to extend.

Shortcut Guide Reimagined

The headliner is the rebuilt Shortcut Guide. For newcomers, Shortcut Guide displays an overlay of Windows key shortcuts when you hold the Windows key for a short duration. The previous version felt static—a grid of predefined combinations with limited interaction. Version 0.100 tears that down and replaces it with a dynamic, customizable panel.

Now, the overlay adapts to your active context. If you’re in Microsoft Edge, it surfaces browser-specific shortcuts; if you’re on the desktop, it emphasizes window management tricks. A new search bar lets you type what you want to do—“snap window left”—and see the matching shortcut immediately. You can also pin your most-used combinations, reorder the display, and adjust the activation delay. The visual refresh aligns with Windows 11’s Fluent Design language, with acrylic blur and rounded corners.

Under the hood, the shortcut database is exposed via a configuration file, letting advanced users add custom shortcuts for third-party apps. This solves a longstanding pain point: the old Shortcut Guide was locked to Microsoft-curated shortcuts. Now you can teach it your own tool’s hotkeys, and they’ll appear seamlessly in the overlay. The rebuild uses a modular renderer built on WinUI 3, which improves animation smoothness and reduces memory footprint compared to the previous WPF implementation.

The PowerToys Command Palette—previously known as PowerToys Run—has evolved into a launcher that rivals Spotlight on macOS or Raycast. With the 0.100 release, Microsoft introduces an Extension Gallery, turning the utility into a platform. The gallery is a curated repository where community developers can publish plugins. Users browse, install, and update extensions directly from the Command Palette interface, without touching a file system.

Out of the gate, the gallery includes extensions for unit conversion, web search, clipboard history, system commands (restart, sleep, shutdown), and even a dedicated chat launcher for Microsoft Teams. Installing an extension is a one-click affair; the palette automatically reloads and surfaces the new commands. This ecosystem approach multiplies the tool’s usefulness beyond what a small core team could ship alone.

From a technical perspective, extensions are built on a new SDK that communicates via a lightweight IPC protocol. Each extension runs in its own process, isolating failures and preventing the main palette from crashing. The gallery’s backend verifies package signatures, ensuring that malicious code can’t slip in. Developers can submit their work through a GitHub workflow, and a team of maintainers reviews every entry before publication. This mirrors the model used by Visual Studio Code extensions, and early feedback on the developer experience has been positive.

Dock Embraces Multi-Monitor Setups

One of the most requested features finally arrives: the PowerToys Dock utility now works across multiple monitors. Previously, you could only pin the dock to a single display, leaving secondary monitors bare. Power users with dual- or triple-screen rigs often resorted to third-party launchers to get consistent behavior. The 0.100 Dock supports three modes: Mirror (identical dock on all screens), Independent (each screen has its own set of pinned apps), and Follow Focus (the dock appears on whatever monitor holds the active window).

Configuration lives in the PowerToys Settings app, where you can also adjust the dock’s position, size, icon spacing, and taskbar integration per monitor. The implementation respects Windows’ display scaling and dynamic DPI changes, so dragging windows between screens with different scaling factors doesn’t cause blurry icons or layout shifts.

The update also fixes a bug where the Dock would occasionally fail to hide when fullscreen applications were running, a residual issue from the initial release. Performance has been tuned: animation frames are now capped to the monitor’s refresh rate, eliminating the micro-stutter some users observed on high-refresh displays.

Power Display Gets Reliability Boost

Power Display, the tool for managing multi-monitor layouts and resolution profiles, receives a reliability overhaul rather than flashy new features. The team focused on the top-requested stability fixes. Hot-plugging a monitor—connecting or disconnecting—no longer scrambles saved layouts. The utility now detects EDID changes properly and restores your preferred arrangement without manual intervention.

Flickering on mode change has been drastically reduced, thanks to an updated display driver communication layer. In scenarios where Windows itself struggles with HDR toggles or DSC (Display Stream Compression) handshakes, Power Display intervenes with a fallback mechanism that renegotiates the link. Users of high-refresh 4K panels and ultra-wide screens will likely notice the improvement.

Additionally, the UI now includes a visual representation of monitor bezel gaps, so you can align displays pixel-perfectly. The team added a quick-access toggle for HDR and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) right from the system tray, cutting down the steps needed to switch between productivity and gaming modes.

Under the Hood: Migration to .NET 10

Perhaps the most significant invisible change is the migration from .NET 9 to .NET 10. PowerToys now runs on the latest long-term support (LTS) framework, which brings both performance gains and extended support timelines. The .NET 10 runtime’s JIT compiler delivers faster startup times for all utilities—benchmarks show PowerToys Run launches 23% quicker, and FancyZones applies layouts with measureable responsiveness improvement.

Memory usage across the suite has dropped, thanks to improved garbage collection heuristics in .NET 10. A typical installation with Run, Keyboard Manager, and FancyZones enabled now idles at about 120 MB, down from 150 MB in the previous release. The team also took the opportunity to refactor several core modules, eliminating technical debt accumulated during rapid feature development. Com interface generation and P/Invoke calls have been streamlined, reducing the risk of native crashes.

The .NET 10 switch ensures compatibility with future Windows updates, as Microsoft aligns its own tooling with the latest framework. This also makes it easier for community contributors, who can now target a unified runtime across all PowerToys projects.

Availability and Requirements

PowerToys 0.100 is installable via two channels:

  • GitHub Releases: The MSI and EXE installers are available at the official release page. This is the primary distribution method and includes release notes and source code.
  • Microsoft Store: The app is listed as “Microsoft PowerToys” and will auto-update through the Store’s update mechanism. New users can install directly from the Store listing.

System requirements remain modest: Windows 10 build 19041 (version 2004) or higher, or any Windows 11 build. The tools run on x64 and ARM64 processors natively. Existing users can update in-place; settings and plugin configurations are preserved.

What This Means for PowerToys

Version 0.100 solidifies PowerToys as more than a collection of handy utilities—it’s becoming a open-source platform. The Extension Gallery in particular invites a flywheel effect: more users attract more developers, who build more extensions, which in turn draw more users. Microsoft’s commitment to .NET 10 signals that the project is not a side experiment but a product with a long roadmap.

Future releases will likely lean harder into this extensibility. The team has mentioned plans to decouple utilities into pluggable modules, so users can install only what they need. The Shortcut Guide rebuild hints at a broader UI modernization across the suite, potentially bringing all tools under a common WinUI 3 design language. And while the Dock is now multi-monitor, there’s chatter about adding launchpad-style overlay similar to the macOS Launchpad.

For today, though, the 0.100 update delivers tangible improvements that Windows enthusiasts will appreciate. Whether you’re a keyboard-centric productivity hound or someone who loves tweaking the desktop to look and work just right, this release is worth downloading.