Power Display: Monitor Controls Without Leaving the Taskbar
The latest PowerToys release introduces Power Display, a utility that places core monitor controls directly in the system tray. Instead of hunting through Windows taskbar display settings or pressing tiny physical buttons on the monitor, you now click a tray icon to adjust the screen. Once enabled, Power Display detects your desktop or laptop displays and exposes whatever controls each panel supports. At a minimum, you get a brightness slider, but many monitors also unlock contrast, color temperature, rotation, and even volume. Crucially, system tray monitor adjustment works with multiple displays, showing separate sliders for each screen so you can fine‑tune them independently. For anyone who frequently switches between work and entertainment setups or works in changing lighting conditions, this new PowerToys monitor control option removes a lot of friction from everyday display management.
How the New Taskbar Monitor Control Fits Into Your Workflow
Power Display is managed like any other PowerToys module, which helps it slot neatly into existing workflows. After installing or updating PowerToys, you head into its settings to toggle the feature on, customize its activation shortcut, and decide which sliders appear. If you only care about brightness, you can hide the rest; if you constantly tweak color temperature or rotation, you can surface those instead. PowerToys also lets you create and save custom profiles, so you might set up one for late‑night coding and another for photo editing. Because everything lives behind a small icon in the system tray, the experience feels much lighter than opening full Windows settings panels. It turns display management into a quick, almost subconscious task that you can perform in seconds between switching apps or moving windows around your desktop.
Grab And Move: Display Control Meets Easier Window Management
The same update that adds Power Display also introduces Grab And Move, a tool designed to make moving and resizing windows less finicky. Instead of carefully grabbing a title bar or window border, you hold down the activation key and click anywhere in the window. By default, Alt + left‑click lets you drag a window, while Alt + right‑click resizes it horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. In PowerToys settings, you can swap Alt for the Windows key, prevent the feature from running when Game Mode is on, or exclude certain apps altogether. Combined with the new taskbar monitor control, this makes it easier to rapidly adapt your workspace: tweak brightness, slide a window into place, and get back to work. It’s especially helpful on large monitors where corners and edges are harder to reach with the mouse.
A Broader Push to Boost Windows Productivity Tools
Beyond Power Display and Grab And Move, this PowerToys release refreshes several existing Windows productivity tools, underscoring Microsoft’s ongoing investment in the suite. Command Palette now lets you pin frequently used commands, turning it into a faster launcher for common system actions. Keyboard Manager Editor simplifies editing recorded key mappings, lowering the barrier to customizing shortcuts across your workflow. ZoomIt, the screen zoom and annotation tool, adds support for scrolling screenshots so you can capture long pages or tall app windows in one go. Together with system tray monitor adjustment, these updates show PowerToys evolving into an increasingly cohesive toolkit: it manages windows, screens, shortcuts, and screenshots from a single, user‑tunable hub. For power users and everyday workers alike, that means less time digging through menus and more time staying focused in the apps that actually matter.