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How to Back Up and Restore PowerToys Settings

Don’t want to lose all your PowerToys settings and configurations? This article shows how to back up PowerToys settings and restore them when needed.

PowerToys has a lot of little but useful tools that eliminate the need to install multiple applications for simple tasks and enhance the overall Windows experience.

One of the best things is that each tool in the PowerToys application has simple but much-needed customization options. For example, you can turn off a specific tool or feature, change the keyboard shortcut to activate the tool, modify the behavior or options of a particular feature, etc.

Once you configure PowerToys how you want, you can back up the PowerToys settings. That way, you can restore all the PowerToys settings and configurations with just a couple of clicks if you ever want to reset or reinstall it. The good thing is that it is straightforward to back up PowerToys settings and restore them as and when needed.

So, without further ado, let me show you how to back up and restore PowerToys in Windows.

Table of contents:

  1. Requirement
  2. How to Backup PowerToys settings
  3. How to change PowerToys backup location
  4. How to Restore PowerToys settings

Requirement

To back up and restore PowerToys settings, you should use PowerToys v0.64.0 or higher. If you use a version lower than v0.64.0, you will not have access to the backup and restore options.

How to Back Up PowerToys settings

You can back up all PowerToys settings as a .ptb (PFB) file and save it to the disk. Let me show you how to do it.

  1. Launch PowerToys.
  2. Select “General” on the sidebar.
  3. Find the “Backup & restore” section.
  4. Click the “Backup” button.
  5. PowerToys immediately creates a backup of all its settings.
  6. The backup can be found under the “Documents > PowerToys > Backup” folder under your home directory.
  7. Close the PowerToys window.

Steps with more details:

First of all, launch the PowerToys application. You can double-click the PowerToys icon on the taskbar or search for it in the Start menu.

After opening PowerToys, click “General” on the sidebar. This is where you can configure the PowerToys settings. Find the “Backup & restore” section on this page and click the “Backup” button.

back up PowerToys settings

As soon as you click the button, PowerToys create a backup in the “Documents > PowerToys > Backup” folder in your Home directory.

The default PowerToys backup location is C:\Users\username\Documents\PowerToys\Backup. Replace “username” with your actual Windows user account name.

How to change PowerToys backup location

If you want, you can change the default PowerToys backup location. For example, I changed the backup location to OneDrive. That way, I can access it on other computers.

Here’s how to change the default PowerToys backup location.

  1. Open the PowerToys application.
  2. Click “General” on the sidebar.
  3. Click “Browse” under “Backup & restore.”
  4. Choose the folder of your choice.
  5. Click “Select Folder.”
  6. With that, you’ve changed the PowerToys backup folder.
  7. Close the PowerToys window.
select new PowerToys backup folder
change PowerToys backup folder

How to Restore PowerToys settings

Once you have a backup file, you can use it to restore PowerToys settings. Let me show you how to do it.

  1. Open the PowerToys application.
  2. Click “General” on the sidebar.
  3. Find the “Backup & restore” section.
  4. Click the “Restore” button.
  5. PowerToys will restart automatically.
  6. With that, you’ve restored PowerToys from backup.
  7. Close the PowerToys window.

Steps with more details:

First, open PowerToys and go to the “General” page. Here, find the “Backup & restore” section and click the “Restore” button.

restore PowerToys settings

As soon as you do that, PowerToys will grab the latest backup file from the backup folder and uses it to restore itself. In the process, PowerToys will restart automatically.

After restarting, the restoring process is complete. Verify that all the settings are configured properly and close the PowerToys application.

That is all. It is that simple to back up and restore PowerToys settings.

I hope this simple and easy how-to guide helped you.

If you are stuck or need some help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.

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