Another nifty tool and a handy feature are coming to PowerToys. Microsoft’s open-source project has come a long way since its first arrival, with the company collaborating with developers to add a handful of new features.
Things have been moving quickly, with additions like listing processes that prevent a file from being deleted, an OCR tool, and even a Screen Ruler.
Two new features are now in development, one of which at least is sure to please regular users of the app.
Future updates to the program will finally add settings backup capabilities and the ability to edit the hosts files on your system.
The Settings backup feature, as the name suggests, lets you export all your customizations to a dedicated file, which can then be used to restore settings from another. Microsoft is also adding additional options here, like automatic backups and restorations.
You will find this new backup option in the General tab alongside the option to specify where PowerToys should store its backups.
That’s a settings addition, but PowerToys is also getting a new toy for editing hosts file. This is a very welcome addition, as current versions of Windows have no built-in tools for working with hosts, and a dedicated utility for this should come in real handy.
As you can imagine, the hosts editor in PowerToys allows you to work with the file and make your edits without the need to use good old Notepad.
The tool will allow you to add new entries, reposition, disable, filter, and ping existing addresses. You will also be able to add comments to each entry for extra convenience and to keep track of things.
No information yet on when these two new PowerToys features will become available in the program, but they should not take too long to arrive.
