Six File Explorer windows open? A new shortcut cycles just those

Alt+Tab has one irritating habit. It shows you everything. With six File Explorer windows, a browser and a spreadsheet open, getting from one Explorer window to the next means walking past all of it. Microsoft's free PowerToys pack fixed that on 25 August.

The new tool is Window Hopper, in PowerToys 0.101. Press Alt plus the backtick key - the one above Tab, left of the 1 - and it cycles only through windows belonging to whichever app you're in at that moment. Everything else stays out of the way. The shortcut is configurable if that key sits awkwardly on your keyboard. Mac users have had this for years, and it's a small thing that removes a small daily annoyance.

The rest of the release is worth a look if PowerToys is already installed. There's now an Insider channel under Settings, General, Update channel, so you can decide whether to take preview builds or stay on stable. Command Palette has a compact mode that opens as a bare search box and only expands once results appear. PowerDisplay can link brightness across several monitors so one slider moves them together. And ZoomIt, the presentation tool, picked up webcam background blur, microphone noise cancellation, and a Ctrl+9 mirror that throws one region of your screen onto a second display.

PowerToys runs on Windows 10 as well as 11 and it really is Microsoft's own - but get it from the Microsoft Store, winget, or the PowerToys releases page on GitHub, because lookalike sites for this exact tool have been handing out password stealers. Tendvane's app-update check installs and updates PowerToys through winget along with everything else, which keeps you out of search results altogether.