microsoft
Dashboard/Feature overview
Description of the new feature / enhancement
Hi. Thanks for an awesome collection of tools.
My issue: Both the dashboard and the grouped featurepane is terrible when looking for a tool. Please make a simpel tabel: Name | Shortcut | State With possibility to sort the columns and filter on State
Scenario when this would be used?
Enabling/disabling tools
Supporting information
No response
@niels9001 I kinda love this idea. I feel like I'm always hunting for the module I want, because sometimes I have the window big enough for 2 columns and sometimes it's 3. A simple list would probably work better for me?
But I suspect we could just make it a [Dashboard | List] split button
Ah, wonderfull, then we feel the same way :-) A [Dashboard|List] would be awesome - and nice if it can remember/set a the list to default :-)
Yeah I think this kind of worked back when we had less PT modules.. but things have grown now, and I agree that this might require a revamp. Maybe good to get some feedback from the design team to see what we could do here @cinnamon-msft?
Totally agree - I'd love to redo the dashboard Let's do some mockups and see what layout feels better :) table layout is a really compelling idea
@bluehenve Thanks for opening the issue - we’re actively working on improving the PowerToys dashboard UX! Over time, the current layout became harder to use as more modules were added.
Here’s a concept we’re exploring:
The idea is to align more with the Windows 11 Settings design and make things easier to scan at a glance:
- A full list of modules with toggle switches to turn them on/off (each one deep links to its settings page).
- A central list of all shortcuts, so it's easier to find and remember them.
- Quick-launch buttons for modules that can be launched directly, right at the top for easy access.
@niels9001 the design concept you've shown in the screenshot is a huge improvement over the existing design.
It's not immediately visible in the screenshot but clicking on any of the modules (not on the toggle switch but on their names) should take the user to the settings of that module and this settings page should be opened in a sidebar overlay via SplitView element in WinUI3. This way we don't have to deal with multiple different windows for each module's settings page. The overlay sidebar can be resizable too via the ContentSizer elements.
Like the new view as well. With so many features (good problem to have), does it make sense for the Modules view to have some kind of sorting functionality? To pull forward everything that is enabled vs. disabled so that you might not have to scroll? I'm a bit torn on that feedback since when things are static you get familiar where they are, and when sorting is added it can jump around a bit. And not sure how nice that would play with a feature that you often toggle on/off - how would that be surfaced if it was sortable? That goes down the road of pinning or often/recent used which may be even more happening for end user who likes the simplicity
@niels9001
What a wonderfull improvement 💪 Should more of my wishes come true, I would have:
- Only 1 list showing both Modules AND Shortcuts
- Hide the category section. Or maybe better: A toggle like in the windows Control panel option: Category/Large icons/Small icons
- A feature to Favorite a module, for easy access to the modules you frequently toggle on/off
- A direct way to the full dashboard. Now I click the Powertoys icon in the taskbar > Settings - thats a painfull extra click
Like the new view as well. With so many features (good problem to have), does it make sense for the Modules view to have some kind of sorting functionality? To pull forward everything that is enabled vs. disabled so that you might not have to scroll? I'm a bit torn on that feedback since when things are static you get familiar where they are, and when sorting is added it can jump around a bit. And not sure how nice that would play with a feature that you often toggle on/off - how would that be surfaced if it was sortable? That goes down the road of pinning or often/recent used which may be even more happening for end user who likes the simplicity
That's an interesting idea.. something like below?
Is the Quick Launch section customizable, fixed or work like a history of the latest modules used?
Like the new view as well. With so many features (good problem to have), does it make sense for the Modules view to have some kind of sorting functionality? To pull forward everything that is enabled vs. disabled so that you might not have to scroll? I'm a bit torn on that feedback since when things are static you get familiar where they are, and when sorting is added it can jump around a bit. And not sure how nice that would play with a feature that you often toggle on/off - how would that be surfaced if it was sortable? That goes down the road of pinning or often/recent used which may be even more happening for end user who likes the simplicity
That's an interesting idea.. something like below?
Yes something like that is what I was expecting. I'm not sure how it would play when dealing with Modules that you toggle on/off frequently. Perhaps pinning would be a way to solve that, or not sorting alphabetically by sub-group when sorting by category (sorting by recently toggled when sub-grouping)? Though alphabetically in sub-group is likely a user's expected behavior