Hey there, my tech-loving followers! It’s your funny guy Nuked here, ready to bring you some exciting news from the world of technology. Today, I want to talk about Microsoft PowerToys’ latest addition called Crop and Lock. This nifty feature allows you to crop app windows and focus only on the details that matter to you. Isn’t that cool?

Now, for those who may not be familiar with PowerToys, let me give you a quick rundown. Microsoft revived this utility suite back in 2019 and even open-sourced it on GitHub. It’s packed with useful tools like toggles for plaintext pasting and the ability to keep apps always on top. And now, they’ve added Crop and Lock to the mix.

Crop and Lock is compatible with both Windows 11 and Windows 10 v2004 (19041) or newer. It offers two modes to cater to different needs. The Thumbnail crop mode gives you a live feed of the selected area, updating in real-time with the page. On the other hand, the “Reparent” mode is more interactive but may have compatibility issues with certain apps.

So, how do you use this awesome feature? Well, if you already have PowerToys installed (which I highly recommend), all you need are a couple of keyboard shortcuts:

– Thumbnail: Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + T

– Reparent: Windows key + Ctrl + Shift + R

Just remember to select the window you want to crop before using the shortcut. You can’t just grab any old app window on your screen, my friends.

Now, let’s see Crop and Lock in action! Our very own Sean Hollister decided to give it a spin and created a thumbnail crop of his Steam downloads. He also cropped his office lights from Home Assistant, allowing him to keep a small window with only those controls. Pretty neat, huh?

Sean did mention that while the Reparent mode was great for creating a micro web browser, it only allowed for vertical scrolling. But hey, it’s still a handy feature to have.

Of course, like any new addition, Crop and Lock does have a few known issues that Microsoft is working on. For example, cropping maximized or full-screen windows in “Reparent” mode might not work as expected. It’s recommended to resize the window to fill the screen corners instead. Some UWP apps, like the Windows Calculator, may not react well to being cropped in Reparent mode either.

But don’t worry, Microsoft is aware of these issues and is constantly improving PowerToys. In fact, Crop and Lock was just added to version 0.73.0 of PowerToys, which was released a couple of days ago for both X64 and Arm64 architectures.

So there you have it, my tech-savvy pals! Crop and Lock is here to make your app window cropping experience a breeze. Give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments below. Until next time, stay funny and stay techie!