PowerToys 0.55 brings another new tool to help you locate the mouse cursor easily

In October last year, Microsoft released a major update for its PowerToys suite. The update included a new Find My Mouse tool, which helped users easily locate the mouse cursor on their screens by shining a spotlight on it. Microsoft then released a Mouse Highlighter tool with PowerToys 0.51, which highlighted the cursor with a yellow circle on mouse button clicks, making it easy for users to show clicks during a presentation. Microsoft is now rolling out another mouse utility with PowerToys 0.55.0 that aims to help users locate the cursor on their screens by taking a slightly different approach.

The new Mouse Pointer Crosshairs utility in PowerToys 0.55.0 draws a crosshair on your screen centered on the mouse pointer (via Bleeping Computer). You can enable it using the default Ctrl+Alt+P keyboard shortcut (or set up a custom shortcut) and customize its appearance by heading to the Appearance & behavior section under the new ‘Mouse Pointer Crosshairs’ setting. As you can see in the attached screenshot, you can change the crosshair color, opacity, center radius, thickness, border color, and border size.

Unlike the Find My Mouse utility, in which the spotlight disappears after a few seconds, the new mouse pointer crosshair is persistent. This means that it’ll stay on your screen until you disable it using the keyboard shortcuts. As a result, it should be a bit more useful for users who have some form of visual impairment. The PowerToys team says that the new crosshair utility was co-developed with the accessibility team at Microsoft.

Along with the new Mouse Pointer Crosshairs tool, PowerToys 0.55.0 brings preview support for more than 150 developer files for the preview pane and STL format thumbnail generation with two new File Explorer add-ons. The update also includes a number of bug fixes, improvements, and changes. Check out the full changelog in the section below for more details.

Microsoft PowerToys 0.55.0 changelog

• General
  • .NET runtime is now on 5, our next release will be upgraded to .NET 6. Moving to .NET 5 and then 6 helped reduce our moving parts in a single release so we went this route. Why this is important is this is one of the major work items needed for ARM64 support. In addition, this should help provide a speed boosts once we are on .NET 6.
  • @jsoref’s spelling plugin help
• Always on Top
  • Fixed one of two borders showing incorrectly bugs.
  • Border defaults to OS accent color now. Thanks @davidegiacometti
  • Reduced CPU / GPU activity. Not done improving, we know we can do better.
• Fancy Zones
  • Bug fixed to not lose zones after update
  • Fixed editor margin issue for Chinese language. Thanks @niels9001
• File explorer add-ons
  • GCode thumbnails now have transparency. Thanks @pedrolamas
  • New Utility – Developer files for File Explorer preview pane. This should add about 150 file extensions total. We are using the Monaco Editor to power this experience. Thanks @aaron-junker!
  • New Utility – STL thumbnails added! Preview pane support is already in Windows. Thanks @pedrolamas!
• Image Resizer
  • Fixed bug with too much meta data. Thanks @CleanCodeDeveloper
  • Fixed bug resizing bug for constant height while maintaining aspect ratio. Thanks @CleanCodeDeveloper
• Mouse utilities
  • New Utility – Crosshair over pointer via Ctrl+Alt+P. This feature was co-developed with the accessibility team at Microsoft. Thanks @niels9001 for helping with the icon!
• PowerRename
  • Files are sorted now how File Explorer sorts.
•  PowerToys Run
  • Improved speed and fixed bugs with Window walker plugin. Thanks @htcfreek
  • Window Walker will now show path of elevated apps. Thanks @davidegiacometti
  • Added UEFI command to system commands. Thanks @htcfreek
  • Fixed crashing bug in EnvironmentHelper class. Thanks @htcfreek
  • Fix URI plugin bug with ^:. Thanks @franky920920
  • VS Code plugin not showing workspaces with latest Code version was corrected. Thanks @ricardosantos9521
  • Fixed bug that caused plugins to not load. Thanks @davidegiacometti
  • Fixed crash in Uri plugin and Web search plugin. Thanks @cyberrex5!
•  Settings
  • Fixed a regression with settings being reset when moving from admin to non-admin
•  Video Conference Mute
  • Fixed crashing bug with Zoom and other clients. We found someone we could remotely debug with and identify the actual crashing part.
  • Change of behavior: When leaving a meeting, VCM will now leave your microphone in the state it was. This mimics behavior of applications if VCM was not present.
  • Change of behavior: When you exit PowerToys, your current microphone state will remain.

You can download PowerToys 0.55.0 on the Microsoft Store or from the PowerToys GitHub page.

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