Microsoft PowerToys Keyboard Shortcuts
PowerToys is not one application with one keymap. It is a collection of more than twenty-five independent utilities, each with its own activation shortcut, each of which can be enabled, disabled or rebound separately. That structure explains why PowerToys shortcut lists disagree with each other so often: a binding is only a default until the user changes it, several utilities ship disabled, and the set of utilities itself grows with each release. The practical consequence is that PowerToys Settings is the authoritative reference for your machine, not any published table. Every utility's page in Settings shows its current activation shortcut in an editable control, and clicking that control and pressing a new combination rebinds it immediately. If a shortcut below does nothing, the two things to check in order are whether that utility is enabled at all and what its shortcut is currently set to — in that order, because a disabled utility is the more common answer. A second structural point that causes real confusion. PowerToys shortcuts are global hotkeys registered with Windows, so they fire regardless of which application has focus. That is what makes them useful, and it is also what makes conflicts likely: any combination PowerToys claims is one the focused application will never see. When a shortcut inside another program stops working after installing PowerToys, a collision is the usual explanation, and the fix is to rebind on whichever side matters less. Elevation is the third thing worth knowing before troubleshooting anything. If the focused window belongs to an application running as administrator and PowerToys is not, PowerToys' hotkeys will not fire over it. Nothing is broken; Windows simply does not deliver input from a lower-integrity process to a higher one. Running PowerToys elevated resolves it, at the cost of running a large utility suite with administrator rights — which is a real trade-off rather than an obvious yes. The shortcuts below are the shipped defaults for the most-used utilities. Several PowerToys tools have no keyboard activation at all because they work through the File Explorer context menu or run in the background, and those are noted rather than omitted.
Launchers Search
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open PowerToys Run | Alt+Space | Not available | Opens a quick launcher for applications, files, calculations, running processes and plugin results. Alt+Space is Windows' own window menu by default, so PowerToys deliberately claims a binding most people never use intentionally. |
| Open the Command Palette | Win+Alt+Space | Not available | The newer, extensible successor to PowerToys Run, with its own extension model. Both can be enabled at once on different bindings, which is worth doing while you decide whether the newer one covers your habits. |
| Show the Windows shortcut guide | Win+Shift+/ | Not available | Overlays a reference of Windows' own key combinations for the current window. Aimed at learning the shortcuts Windows already has rather than adding new ones, which makes it the one PowerToys utility whose value declines as you use it. |
Window Management
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open the FancyZones layout editor | Win+Shift+` | Not available | Opens the editor for defining zone layouts — grids and canvases that windows snap into. The backtick is the key above Tab on most layouts, which makes this awkward on keyboards that place it elsewhere. |
| Snap a window between zones | Win+Arrow (with Override Windows Snap enabled) | Not available | Moves the focused window between zones instead of using Windows' built-in snapping. Off by default — the override has to be enabled in FancyZones settings, and which arrows are overridden depends on whether you choose zone index or relative position. |
| Apply a custom layout by number | Win+Ctrl+Alt+[number] | Not available | Switches the active screen to a custom layout you have assigned that number in the editor. Requires quick layout switch to be enabled, and the number has to be assigned to the layout first. |
| Cycle windows within a zone | Win+Page Up / Win+Page Down | Not available | Steps through the windows snapped into the same zone. The answer to the obvious question about stacking several windows in one zone — they coexist and this is how you bring each forward. |
| Pin a window above all others | Win+Ctrl+T | Not available | Keeps the focused window above every other window until toggled off, with a coloured border marking which one is pinned. Genuinely missing from Windows itself, which is why this is among the most-used PowerToys utilities. |
| Crop a window into its own window | Win+Ctrl+Shift+T (thumbnail) / Win+Ctrl+Shift+R (reparent) | Not available | Creates a small live window showing one region of a larger one. Thumbnail mode mirrors the region; reparent mode moves the actual control into the new window, so it stays interactive but the original is disrupted. |
Capture Picking
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pick a colour from anywhere on screen | Win+Shift+C | Not available | Samples the colour under the cursor from any application and copies it in your chosen format. Scrolling up zooms and freezes the image, which is how you pick a specific pixel on an element that changes on hover. |
| Copy text from anywhere with OCR | Win+Shift+T | Not available | Dims the screen and lets you drag a region, then puts the recognised text on the clipboard. The route to text in an image, a video frame, or an error dialog that refuses to be selected. |
| Measure pixels on screen | Win+Shift+M | Not available | Measures distances on screen, using edge detection to snap to the bounds of whatever is under the cursor rather than requiring an exact drag. Aimed at checking spacing in a design against what actually rendered. |
| Open Advanced Paste | Win+Shift+V | Not available | Opens a panel offering to paste the clipboard converted to another format — plain text, markdown, JSON — with optional AI-assisted transformation. Distinct from the plain-text paste below, which has its own direct binding. |
| Paste as plain text | Win+Ctrl+Alt+V | Not available | Pastes the clipboard with all formatting stripped, working in applications that offer no such option of their own. Solves the recurring problem of pasted text arriving with a foreign font, size and colour attached. |
| Preview the selected file | Ctrl+Space (in File Explorer) | Not available | Shows the contents of the selected file in a preview window without opening its application, covering images, documents, code and archives. The closest Windows equivalent to Quick Look on macOS. |
| Highlight the mouse pointer | Press Ctrl twice | Not available | Dims the screen around the cursor to reveal where it is. A double-tap on a modifier rather than a combination, which makes it one of the few PowerToys triggers that cannot collide with an application shortcut. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a PowerToys shortcut do nothing on my machine?
Three causes, in order of likelihood. The utility is disabled — many ship off and each is toggled separately in Settings. The shortcut has been changed, either by you or because a newer release altered a default. Or the focused window is running elevated while PowerToys is not, in which case Windows will not deliver the hotkey to PowerToys at all. That last one is worth knowing because nothing appears broken: the shortcut works everywhere except over Task Manager, an elevated terminal or a similar window.
How do I change a PowerToys activation shortcut?
Open PowerToys Settings, select the utility, and click its activation-shortcut control. It starts recording, and pressing your new combination assigns it. There is one constraint worth knowing: PowerToys requires activation shortcuts to include Win, Ctrl, Alt or Shift and will not accept a bare key, which is a sensible guard against binding something you type. If the combination you want is already claimed by another PowerToys utility, Settings will tell you rather than creating a silent conflict.
Is PowerToys available for Mac or Linux?
No. PowerToys is Windows-only and deeply tied to Windows APIs — window management, the shell, File Explorer integration — so a port is not a realistic prospect. Several individual utilities have well-established equivalents elsewhere: Raycast and Alfred cover what PowerToys Run does on macOS, Rectangle and Amethyst cover FancyZones, and macOS has Quick Look built in where Windows needs Peek.
Why did an application shortcut stop working after I installed PowerToys?
Because PowerToys registers global hotkeys with Windows, and a global hotkey is consumed before the focused application sees it. If PowerToys claims a combination your editor or browser also uses, the application will never receive it. The fix is to rebind whichever side you use less. Alt+Space for PowerToys Run is the most common source of this — it is the Windows window menu by default, which is why PowerToys chose it, but a few applications use it for their own command palette.
What is the difference between PowerToys Run and the Command Palette?
Command Palette is the newer utility and is intended as PowerToys Run's successor, with a different extension model and a broader remit — commands and tools alongside applications and files. Both currently ship and both can be enabled at once on different bindings, which is the sensible arrangement while you work out whether the newer one covers your habits. Alt+Space remains PowerToys Run's default and Win+Alt+Space the Command Palette's.
Which PowerToys utilities have no keyboard shortcut?
A fair number, because they work another way rather than through a hotkey. PowerRename, Image Resizer, File Locksmith and New+ are File Explorer context-menu extensions. Keyboard Manager, Awake, Environment Variables and Light Switch are configured once and run in the background. Mouse Without Borders has its own configuration. Their absence from a shortcut list is not an omission — there is genuinely nothing to press.
Can I use PowerToys shortcuts on a keyboard without a Windows key?
Not directly, since most PowerToys activation shortcuts include Win. The workaround is PowerToys' own Keyboard Manager, which can remap an unused key to act as Win — a common choice on compact or Mac-layout keyboards where the physical key is missing or in an awkward position. Alternatively, rebind the utilities you use to Ctrl+Alt combinations, which PowerToys accepts as long as at least one modifier is present.
Does FancyZones replace Windows Snap?
Only if you tell it to. The Override Windows Snap setting is off by default, so out of the box Win+arrow keeps doing what Windows does and FancyZones snapping happens by dragging with Shift held. Turning the override on changes which arrows are intercepted depending on whether you pick zone index or relative position — index overrides only left and right, relative position overrides all four. Win+Shift+arrow, which moves a window to the next monitor, is never overridden.