Microsoft shipped PowerToys 0.100.0 on June 10, 2026, and the headliner is a quiet but consequential expansion of the Command Palette Dock: independent per-monitor configurations. Instead of cloning the same toolbar across every display, you can now assign separate sets of pinned commands, launchers, and live performance widgets to each monitor.

This turns the Dock from a single-screen convenience into a multi‑display cockpit—putting CPU, memory, network, or battery readouts exactly where they make sense for your workflow, while keeping other screens distraction-free.

What’s Changing in the Dock

The Dock itself first appeared as an optional preview in PowerToys 0.98.0 on March 17, 2026. It creates a persistent toolbar anchored to one screen edge, reserved via the Windows AppBar API so application windows don’t overlap it. Version 0.99.0, released April 28, added Compact mode for top- and bottom‑docked toolbars, always‑on‑top behavior that steps aside for full‑screen apps, and a smoother pinning flow with label controls.

Now version 0.100.0 delivers what early adopters were waiting for: multi‑monitor awareness. Each connected display gets its own Dock instance, its own set of pinned bands, and you can drag individual items from one monitor’s Dock to another. That means you can keep a clean, maximized work area on your primary screen, pin performance monitors and a few quick‑launch commands on a secondary display, and throw battery and network status onto a third screen where they’re glanced at but never in the way.

The bands themselves are organized into three regions—Start, Center, and End. By default, the Start region holds the Home command and the WinGet launcher; the End region includes the Performance Monitor and a Date/Time widget. But you can fill any region with bookmarks, custom commands, or individual system metrics. With this release, the performance widgets become granular: CPU, memory, GPU, network, and battery can each be pinned separately rather than bundled into one monitor widget. That granularity is what makes per‑monitor placement genuinely useful. A network readout has more purpose beside a remote desktop console than above a full‑screen document; GPU activity belongs near a graphics tool, not a coding window.

What It Means for You

If you work across two, three, or more monitors, this update changes the Dock’s role from a one‑size‑fits‑all strip to a customizable information radiator. Power users who juggle admin consoles, dashboards, and documentation can now build what amounts to a personal at‑a‑glance operations center on a secondary screen, without sacrificing pixel real estate on the primary display. A developer might park a vertical monitor with a compact Dock full of quick‑launch commands; a system administrator could keep live CPU\/memory\/disk readouts on a side panel while the main screen stays focused on a management console.

Single‑monitor setups benefit less, because the permanent space reservation remains a real trade‑off. The Dock cannot auto‑hide, be resized, or dragged. It consumes a strip of your desktop for as long as it’s enabled. On a laptop display or a single 24‑inch screen, that cost might outweigh the convenience of having a few pinned shortcuts always visible.

For IT teams managing fleets, the Dock remains squarely in personal‑productivity territory. It is a preview feature within a user‑level utility, not a managed Windows component. There’s no Group Policy, no silent deployment, and no central reporting. If a user wants to run it on a managed workstation, it’s best treated as an opt‑in experiment, not a standard part of a desktop baseline.

How We Got Here

Command Palette itself landed as a modern replacement for Run and a launcher that could do much more. The Dock preview surfaced in version 0.98.0 with the promise of a persistent toolbar—something PowerToys hadn’t offered before. At that point, it was a single‑display affair: you picked a screen edge and pinned a few things, but every display saw the same layout.

Version 0.99.0 refined the visual behavior. Compact mode shrank horizontal docks, making them less obtrusive on small screens. Always‑on‑top logic improved so that the Dock stays persistent during normal work but yields cleanly to full‑screen apps, media players, and presentations. That release also tightened the pinning experience: right‑click any command in Command Palette and choose “Pin to Dock,” or enter edit mode to rearrange bands with drag‑and‑drop.

Now 0.100.0 breaks the mirroring constraint. Each monitor’s Dock can be configured independently, both in which bands appear and in where it’s anchored. The Dock edit mode is per‑display, so you can add, remove, or even drag a band from one monitor to another in real time. This rapid iteration—three releases in three months—signals that Microsoft is serious about making the Dock a capable workstation tool, preview status notwithstanding.

What to Do Right Now

If you want to try the per‑monitor Dock, update to PowerToys 0.100.0 or later. Then follow a deliberate, low‑risk path to adoption.

Step 1: Enable the basics. Open PowerToys settings, go to Command Palette, and make sure the module is enabled and allowed to run in the background. Without Command Palette, the Dock cannot function.

Step 2: Turn on the Dock preview. Inside Command Palette settings, toggle “Enable Dock.” Choose the display and edge where you want the first Dock to appear. Start with a secondary monitor if you have one—that way your primary workspace stays unchanged while you learn the feature.

Step 3: Pin with purpose, not enthusiasm. Resist the urge to fill every region immediately. Pin two or three commands or widgets that answer a question you actually ask during the day. For instance, if you often check network throughput while remoting into servers, pin the Network widget. If you launch the same three folders hourly, drag them onto the Dock to create bookmarks. Use right‑click > “Pin to Dock” from Command Palette, or right‑click the Dock background > “Edit Dock” to add new bands from the flyout.

Step 4: Configure additional monitors. On each extra display, open the Dock edit mode independently. Decide whether that screen even needs a Dock. A monitor dedicated to documents might be better without one; a screen that hosts monitoring tools might get a compact Dock with only performance widgets. Drag bands between Docks if you move a workflow from one screen to another.

Step 5: Accept the permanent space trade‑off. The Dock reserves screen real estate with the AppBar API. No application can overlap it. That’s great for always‑visible information, but it also means you’re giving up a strip of pixels on each screen that has a Dock. If you later find the lost space distracting, simply disable the Dock on that display—there’s no need to turn off the whole feature.

Remember, you can configure the Dock’s visual style to reduce its footprint. Compact mode (for top\/bottom docks) is less tall, and you can choose acrylic or transparent materials, set background colorization, or even use a custom background image. Experiment in the Appearance section of Dock settings.

What’s Missing and What to Watch

For all its newfound flexibility, the Dock remains opinionated. There is still no auto‑hide, no resizing by dragging, and no repositioning without diving into settings. Microsoft’s design choice favors predictability: the Dock stays where you put it, always visible, and that’s the trade‑off. Many users will continue to request a “float above” option or a peek‑on‑hover behavior. Those aren’t here yet.

The preview label also means features can change. Microsoft has not committed to a timeline for graduating the Dock to a stable component of PowerToys, nor has it detailed what additional capabilities might come next. Given the pace of the last three releases, expect refinements rather than a quiet retirement. The product team is clearly listening: per‑monitor configurations, granular metrics, and the drag‑between‑monitors interactions all stem from community feedback on early builds.

One immediate item to watch is whether system metrics become exportable or configurable beyond simple visual readouts. Right now, the Dock shows live data but doesn’t log or alert—it’s a mirror, not a monitoring system. That’s fine for a personal tool, but it draws a hard line between this and a real enterprise dashboard.

For now, PowerToys 0.100.0 gives you a way to build a custom toolbar that actually respects the multi‑monitor reality of modern Windows workstations. If you already live inside Command Palette, it’s worth the few minutes to set up. If you’ve never used PowerToys, this might be the feature that convinces you to download it.