Unlock Smartphone Features on Your PC with PowerToys & Recall

Summary I install PowerToys first — essential utilities like Awake, Image Resizer, and PowerRename. I use Windows+V clipboard history to pin addresses, emojis, gifs, and paste saved snippets instantly. I use Microsoft Recall to search my timeline and find unsaved work, web pages, or research by keyword. When Microsoft first moved users toward an OS that is more mobile-like with Windows 8, I applauded the move. I know, I was in the minority, but I figured that ripping the band-aid off was a better tactic than Apple’s very slow, methodical move in that direction. People don’t like change, and were going to be vocal regardless, so why not just make it happen and have folks adjust sooner rather than later? As much progress as Microsoft has made in this area with Windows 11, there were still some things I needed to make my laptop computing experience as smooth as my mobile experiences. Today, I’m sharing the six tools I used to make Windows 11 function a bit more like a smartphone in some areas that will be beneficial for other users. Microsoft PowerToys Why isn’t this installed by default? Often, computers come with a bunch of unnecessary “bloat” software installed. Apps that are eating up your storage and that you'll likely never use. It’s for that reason I’m befuddled that Microsoft PowerToys isn’t installed on every Windows computer by default. It’s actually useful! But, I digress. The first thing I’ll do with any Windows computer is hit the Microsoft Store and download the app. Once downloaded, take some time to familiarize yourself with the dozens of productivity utilities and see which ones might help improve your productivity on Windows. I’ll talk about one in particular below, but you can also check out this article for more PowerToys utilities I use in my everyday workflows. PowerToys utilities I’m currently using: Awake - forces your computer to stay woke no matter the power plan settings. File Explorer add-ons - extend the types of files you can preview in folders. Image Resizer - resizes images with a right-click shortcut. Peek - a shortcut to preview audio and video files directly from a folder window. PowerRename - batch rename files with advanced functionality Clipboard History - a running history of clipboard content you can pin for easy pasting later. And it does so much more. Windows 11’s built-in Clipboard History A powerful clipboard tool that does so much more! If you’re already using the copy and paste keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl + c or Ctrl + v, then this Windows key + v shortcut is a no-brainer! This brings up the Windows Clipboard history feature that I’m finding most people don’t know about. Bringing this tool up not only gives you a clipboard history similar to the stock clipboard tool on an Android device, but it also brings up an emoji palette, a Tenor-powered gif tool, Latin symbols, currency symbols, and wonderful ASCII emojis. I’m fairly strict about privacy, so I don’t like adding a bunch of third-party utilities to my computers, and I was looking for a way to replace keywords with text strings as I do on my iPhone 16 Pro Max or Google Pixel 9. I use that functionality primarily for sending my shipping address and contact details to vendors on my phones, but Windows doesn’t have a similar built-in text replacement function. With Clipboard History, you can pin text to the clipboard for future reference, so I’ve pinned my address and contact info. Now, all I need to do in an email is press the Windows key + v, and when the clipboard appears, just click the relevant pinned tile to paste its data into the email body. PowerRename Not smartphone-like, but smartphone-like productivity With screens smaller than our laptops, desktops, and tablets, smartphone OS’s have become masterful at getting things done in the most efficient manner possible. Now, this isn’t a smartphone function replacement so much as smartphone-like efficiency. With PowerRename, you have extended functionality that goes beyond simply highlighting multiple files, then right-clicking them and choosing "Rename." For a file or files you want to rename, highlight them, right-click, and choose Rename with PowerRename to bring up the utility’s interface. It has a deceptively simple interface but is actually a very robust tool, so you’ll definitely want to read the documentation by clicking the question mark in the lower part of the PowerRename window and learn how to get exactly what you need out of it. Microsoft Recall Preview Controversial, I know, but hear me out… I’ve written about this controversial feature here, so I won’t go into all of that in this article. Assuming you’re good with using it, you get a “universal search” of sorts, similar to that on a smartphone. If you need to find something you’ve done on your computer, and you don’t know exactly where you’ve saved it, or when, you simply bring up the Recall app, and you can scrub through a timeline if you know that it’s something you’ve worked on in a specific time period, or you can search by keyword. For those of us who do a lot of research on our computers, frankly, Recall can be an invaluable way to find things without knowing their exact names or where they exist on our computers. And it doesn’t just stop there! If you got distracted during research and didn’t save a web page to an app like Evernote, you can just search through Recall for that web page as well, using keywords to find it. Recall does so much more than provide a great system search function, but you can read more about that in the article I linked to earlier. MusicBee Free, lossless audio playback and conversion Are you ready for the lossless audio revolution? Do you already have .flac, .wav, or other large audio files on your computer and need a way to play them without paying a monthly subscription fee like you’ll have to with the excellent audio app Roon? Then MusicBee is just what the Dr. Dre ordered! Play all your audio files in an app with a simple, clean interface that is highly customizable, with plenty of skins/themes and plugins available to choose from. Lossless is the focus here, so that’s the reason to go with MusicBee over some of the other apps available on the Windows Store. In case you’re wondering, “Why not use Windows Media Player?” Well, it isn’t very friendly when it comes to flac, aac, alac, ogg, and other files that aren’t very common files to the majority of users. For audiophiles and music lovers, MusicBee is light-years ahead of WMP. Password management iOS and macOS have it built in, not Windows 11 I love that the OS wars have subsided a bit, and I can get Apple’s Passwords app on my Surface Pro 11 with the iCloud app available in the Windows Store. With Passwords, I can autofill passwords in the browser, whether I’m using Chrome or Edge, and everything stays in sync across my wife’s and my iPhones and our computers. She also uses a Surface laptop. Sure, there are other excellent password managers like 1Password, but most are subscription-based now, whereas Apple's Passwords app is free and works quite well. So, there it is. Six apps and hacks you can use to make your PC life as efficient as your smartphone use. What are your hacks, if any? Share them in the comments below!