The v0.56 release cycle focused heavily on stability and improvements. Below are some of the highlights!

Installer Hash

C54DDD1D325D3C6F537CAEF2A57F763131F51CAA2BDB23B3E3360185E6032AAC

Highlights

• Upgrade notes! A big feedback items for new versions was upgrade notes. We have the release notes on GitHub as well.
• FancyZones zone limit has been increased to 128 zones. Before the limit was 40.
• Timezone conversion plugin for PowerToys Run! Thanks @TobiasSekan
• Child and Popup window support for FancyZones. To enable, go to Settings→FancyZones→Windows. These were bugs we fixed that without realizing it was a useful feature to most.
• Find my mouse will now activate via shaking the mouse with a settings change!

  

Always on Top

• Fixed excess GPU / CPU usage when enabled
• If border has focus, not closable via F4
• Changing border sizes should resize correctly for existing windows
• Border goes away with Outlook modal windows

ColorPicker

• No longer crashes during theme change

FancyZones

• Increased zone limit from 40 to 128.
• Child and Popup window support for FancyZones. To enable, go to Settings→FancyZones→Windows. These were bugs we fixed that without realizing it was a useful feature to most.

File explorer

• Fixes for Dev file preview: (Thanks @Aaron-Junker)
  • Fix fix for object reference not set.
  • Fix for encoding UTF-8.
  • Fix for file is in use.
  • Fix for saying the file is too big.

Image Resizer

• Fix for invalid operation error. @CleanCodeDeveloper!

Mouse utility

• Find my mouse will now activate via shaking the mouse with a settings change!
• Find my mouse now can excludes apps.
• Fix for crosshair thickness looking odd due to anti-aliasing
• Fix for a hard crash on crosshair (This was a hotfix for 0.55)

PowerRename

• Will not spells check file names anymore. Thanks @niels9001
• Autocomplete result box to not obscure apply button. Thanks @niels9001
• Regex fix

PowerToys Run

• Timezone conversion plugin for PowerToys Run! Thanks @TobiasSekan
• Hexadecimal and binary numbers now are supported in the calculator plugin. This was added a bit ago and we'd like to extend a belated thanks to @gsuberland
• Terminal plugin performance boost. Thanks @htcfreek!
• Terminal will now be found via the Program plugin again.
• Shutdown command is now using hybrid fast argument for shutting down
• Support for VSCodium with VS Code workplace plugin. Thanks @makeProjectGreatAgain

Video conference mute

• nVidia Broadcast software won't crash anymore

Settings

• Upgrade notes in OOBE
• Fix for settings being lost (This was a hotfix for 0.55)
• UX improvements. Thanks @niels9001

Installer

• Believe we have a fix for the long hated "app.dark.png is missing" error. Thanks to @robmen for having a great blog!
• Installer will launch PowerToys under appropriate elevation versus Admin only due to UAC prompt for installation (This was a hotfix for 0.55)
• PowerToys will now start if installed under different user

Development

• ARM64 - We removed the last .NET Framework dependency. Thanks @snickler for helping get this across the finish line!
• .NET 6 upgrade, now on the newest and hottest .NET runtime
• Code analyzers have been upgraded! Thanks @CleanCodeDeveloper!
• Symbols are back!
• Code refactoring, thanks @CleanCodeDeveloper and @cyberrex5 for helping here!
• We are now on VS 2022 with the .NET 6 upgrade.

Community contributions

We'd like to directly mention certain contributors (in alphabetical order) for their continued community support this month and helping directly make PowerToys a better piece of software. @Aaron-Junker, @CleanCodeDeveloper, @cyberrex5, @franky920920, @gsuberland, @htcfreek, @jay-o-way, @makeProjectGreatAgain, @niels9001, @robmen, @snickler, and @TobiasSekan .