He a set of tools grouped into PowerToys Since Windows 95 (yes, this solution is that old), it’s been an excellent proposition for users who want to dive deeper into controlling certain aspects of the operating system. But it is true that after the launch of the version for Windows XP, Microsoft “forgot” about PowerToys, until fortunately in 2019 it decided to bring them back to life and now with an open source license.

Since then, we’ve seen some updates published, the latest in March of that year, and they all come with new features, improvements and more. Obviously, it released an updated version for Windows 11 in 2021, although the Windows 10 version was also quite complete. If you’re still new to PowerToys and you’re a Windows user, believe me it’s worth spending a few minutes exploring this tool to see the huge number of features it offers. Of course, keep in mind that it’s not included with Windows, but you can download it for free from the Microsoft Store.

With a license change from the previous proprietary model to an open source model Microsoft has moved PowerToys development to GitHubwhich is an advantage for many reasons, among which I highlight today the great visibility gained about development, fixing bugs, adding new features, etc. And it is from here, from GitHub, that we get information about a future feature that will be a big improvement to the Windows context menu.

The news I’m talking about and about which we can find information here is New+, an improvement to the “New” item in the Windows context menu, namely the one that appears when we right-click on an empty area of ​​the desktop. Currently, this feature allows us to create a folder, a shortcut, and depending on the applications we have installed, the ability to create documents associated with them.

With New+, however, the usefulness of this feature multiplies exponentially because we can customize the content of this menu, to include those elements that we regularly work with. For this purpose, as you can see in the video below this paragraph, we will only have to create templates, whether they are files, folders or structures composed of both types of elements, save them in the folder configured for this purpose and , if we are already in PowerToys have activated New+, we will have them available in the context menu.

The most interesting thing is that it is also only the beginning, because those responsible are considering very interesting future possibilities, such as creating a “template store”, from which users can get complex pre-configured elements that can be easily added to the context menu. And, of course, there are also mentions of the possibility of somehow including e.g. Generative artificial intelligence to create these templates.

we don’t know yes how long will we have to wait until arrival not only these advanced features, but New+ in its original version, because at this point they gave us no idea about it. However, it seems that its development has already advanced considerably, so we’re crossing our fingers that it will be sooner rather than later.