Microsoft shipped back-to-back PowerToys releases on April 28 and 29, 2026, and one feature in version 0.99 will immediately change how you interact with every window on your desktop. Grab And Move lets you hold a modifier key and drag or resize a window from anywhere inside it—no more hunting for a thin title bar or a vanishing border.
The update landed first as PowerToys 0.99.0, then almost immediately as 0.99.1 to swat early bugs. Alongside Grab And Move, the release introduces Power Display, a tray-based flyout for controlling external monitors, and polishes the Command Palette Dock with compact mode and always-on-top behavior. All three tools are opt-in, but together they make Windows feel more like a customizable workspace and less like a static frame around your apps.
What’s new in PowerToys 0.99
Grab And Move: move and resize windows without aiming
The marquee addition is Grab And Move, listed as a preview feature. Once enabled, you can hold Alt and left-click anywhere inside a window to drag it. Hold Alt and right-click to resize. If your muscle memory already uses Alt for other shortcuts, you can switch the modifier to the Windows key.
The 0.99.1 patch, released on April 29, fixed several rough edges: unintended Alt-key propagation to apps, the ability to drag system surfaces like the Start menu, and conflicts where pressing the G key or opening the Game Bar could misbehave when the Windows key was the modifier. Those fixes matter because a global input hook has to play nice with the entire OS, and Microsoft’s quick turnaround suggests it wants this tool to be reliable fast.
Power Display: your monitor’s buttons, inside Windows
Power Display adds a tray icon that opens a flyout listing all connected displays that support relevant controls. Where the hardware cooperates, you can adjust brightness, contrast, volume, color profile, input source, and power state from that flyout. You can also save named profiles—for instance, a “daytime coding” setup with high brightness and a “late-night reading” profile with lower blue light—and switch between them with a click.
Version 0.99.1 tightened safety. Disruptive controls like input source switching and power state toggles are now off by default, and a confirmation prompt appears before they are applied. That’s a smart move for anyone who has accidentally turned off the wrong monitor in a multi-display rig.
Command Palette Dock: a command strip that lives on your desktop
The Command Palette itself isn’t new, but its Dock companion gets meaningful updates in 0.99. You can now set the Dock to compact mode, keep it always on top, and hide titles or subtitles for pinned commands to save vertical space. Pinning behavior is more deliberate, and extensions run more reliably. These aren’t flashy changes; they’re the kind that determine whether a utility becomes a permanent part of your desktop or gets closed after a day.
What this means for you
For everyday users
If you’ve ever wrestled a window that slipped partway off the screen—especially on a multi-monitor setup or a high-DPI laptop—Grab And Move solves that in two seconds. Enable it, remember one modifier key, and you’ll never need to find a lost title bar again. Power Display is for anyone who has external monitors and hates fumbling with physical buttons hidden on the underside of a bezel. The profile system alone makes it worth enabling if your lighting changes between work and evening.
For power users and multi-monitor setups
Grab And Move quickly becomes muscle memory. Combine it with FancyZones or Snap Layouts, and you have a window management stack that rivals tiling window managers on Linux, but without leaving the stock Windows shell. Power Display is effectively a KVM-lite control surface—switch inputs on a conference-room monitor or turn off a secondary display when you unplug from a dock, all from the system tray. The Command Palette Dock, in compact and always-on-top mode, can replace a messy taskbar for your most-used scripts and applets.
For IT administrators
PowerToys has long been a governance question for managed environments, and 0.99 doesn’t change that. Grab And Move integrates with Group Policy, so you can disable it predictably if a line-of-business application sees unexpected behavior. Power Display’s hardware-dependent controls mean results will vary across fleets—some monitors won’t support every slider, and a control that works perfectly at home might be unwelcome on a shared conference-room display. The right approach isn’t to ban PowerToys outright; it’s to treat each utility as a pilot, lock down the risky ones, and document the modules you deploy. The 0.99.1 patch arriving within 24 hours of the initial release is reassuring, but it also underlines that preview features deserve cautious rollout schedules.
How we got here
PowerToys began its modern life in 2019 as an open-source resurrection of the Windows 95-era toolkit. Since then, it has become Microsoft’s unofficial test kitchen for power-user features—FancyZones, PowerRename, Keyboard Manager, Mouse Without Borders, Text Extractor, Peek, and now Grab And Move and Power Display. The pattern is consistent: Microsoft builds opt-in tools that solve specific desktop irritations, gathers feedback, and occasionally graduates features into Windows itself (Snap Layouts owes a debt to FancyZones, for example).
This update isn’t a sudden embrace of Linux ideas, even though the Alt-drag gesture is a long-standing convention on many Linux desktops. Microsoft has been borrowing and adapting multi-platform ergonomics for years—middle-click scrolling, virtual desktops, and window snapping all have lineage outside Windows. What’s new is the speed and confidence with which PowerToys now ships features that were once considered too niche or too risky for the main OS. Grab And Move is a perfect example: a small, opinionated change to a fundamental interaction model, delivered to users who know enough to seek it out.
The rapid 0.99.1 patch shows this is a living codebase, not a set-it-and-forget-it release. Bugs involving Alt-key propagation and the Start menu may sound obscure, but they highlight how deeply a global drag hook has to reach into the OS. The fact that Microsoft fixed them in a day suggests robust build infrastructure and a user base that reports issues quickly.
What to do now
- Install or update PowerToys from the Microsoft Store or the official GitHub releases. If you’re already running an older version, version 0.99.1 is the one you want for the bug fixes.
- Enable Grab And Move:
- Open PowerToys Settings, go to the “Grab And Move” tab.
- Toggle “Enable Grab And Move” to On.
- Choose your preferred modifier key (Alt or Windows key). Default: Alt.
- The feature works immediately; no restart required. Test by holding the modifier and left-clicking in a window to move it, or right-clicking to resize. - Set up Power Display:
- Navigate to the “Power Display” section in PowerToys Settings and enable it.
- A tray icon appears. Click it to see connected monitors with supported controls.
- Create profiles for different scenarios (work, gaming, low-light) by adjusting sliders and saving.
- Be aware that disruptive controls like input source switching are off by default; you’ll need to enable them explicitly and confirm each action. - Tune the Command Palette Dock:
- If you already use Command Palette, open its settings and switch to the “Dock” tab.
- Enable compact mode to reduce height, toggle “Always on top” for persistent access, and pin your most-used commands.
- For less visual clutter, hide subtitles or titles per pinned item. - If something breaks after the update, check the PowerToys GitHub issues page. Many bugs are addressed in point releases. If you’re in a managed enterprise environment, test the update on a small group first, and use Group Policy to disable modules that cause conflicts.
Outlook: the quiet desktop revolution rolls on
PowerToys 0.99 arrives at version number 0.99—just one point release from the symbolic 1.0 milestone. A 1.0 label might not change the code much, but it would publicly anoint PowerToys as a permanent, supported part of the Windows ecosystem rather than an experimental sidecar. That’s a meaningful distinction for enterprises and casual users alike.
The bigger picture is that Microsoft is systematically chipping away at the rough edges that power users have complained about for years. Grab And Move, Power Display, and the Dock aren’t AI-powered or cloud-synced; they’re just practical tools that make the desktop faster to use. If PowerToys 1.0 ships with this philosophy intact, it could finally give Windows a credible power-user tier—not a separate edition, but a set of official, first-party enhancements that don’t require hunting down third-party utilities.
For now, the takeaway is simple: install PowerToys 0.99.1, spend five minutes turning on Grab And Move and Power Display, and see if your desktop feels a little less like it’s in your way. Microsoft’s own lab for desktop innovation just made the everyday Windows experience noticeably better, one modifier key at a time.