Last month, the Microsoft Powertoys app on Windows got a new feature, PowerOCR, which lets the user copy text from any image. And now, through an update, the app has three more new features; a screen ruler, a quick accent tool, and a text extractor.
With the screen ruler, users will now be able to easily measure pixels on the screen. With Quick Accent, users now have an easier way to write letters with accents, just by holding down the letter you want accented and pressing (for example) the space key. And finally, Text Extractor, which is quite similar to Windows’ Snipping Tool, although on top of this, users will also be able to copy text out of the selected region using OCR and put it on the clipboard courtesy of Joe Finney, (former onmsft.com – known back then as WinBeta.org – writer, way to go Joe!).
However, this update does come with a couple of known issues, for instance, the text extractor feature may fail to recognize text in some cases on ARM64 devices running Windows 10. In some cases, after making the update, context menu entries for PowerRename and Image Resizer for Windows 11 may not appear unless you perform a system restart. And finally, some users have raised concerns and indicated that they are unable to launch the Settings window, which might be caused by the incompatibility with some applications like RTSS RivaTuner Statistics Server and MSI AfterBurner.
If you already have PowerToys running on your device, it should automatically notify you of this update. Alternatively, you can get this update today by launching your app, then clicking on General followed by the Check for Updates, and then the Install Now button. This version of the app is also available on GitHub as well as the Microsoft Store if you do not have it already.
