PowerTray

As time moves on, industry trends change according to a multitude of factors that range from consumer preferences and developers’ ideas to try something new to societal shifts in what is desirable from certain products. When it comes to an operating system designed to maintain compatibility with decades-old software, modernizing its graphical interface can be a difficult task, which is where PowerTray comes into play to provide users with an alternative.

It can be stated that force of habit trumps most other factors that influence users’ expectations regarding most applications. In their quest to ensure usage experience is improved with each iteration shipped, programmers sometimes have to sacrifice the familiarity factor of their program.

In the case of Windows, the design language of many core functions has been slowly replaced in a way that still allows veteran users to access the original layouts. Unfortunately, this approach does sometimes cause confusion as a result of duplicate sections that accomplish the same scenario, with one example being the power plan selector that can be accessed both in the settings as a modernized variant and in the control panel in the form of its legacy style.

For the latter type, those who miss the simplicity of the power selector format last seen in Windows 7 can make use of the app at hand to emulate its ease of use and bring the relevant control panel section back from the omnipresent system tray area by right-clicking the icon and picking the appropriate context menu entry.

As such, users have the option of setting the default plan to be selected automatically on boot, while also displaying a notification confirming their selection to ensure awareness of their choices.

If Microsoft’s current iteration of their signature Fluent Design language does not suit your taste, and you wish to keep making use of the legacy components’ minimalist layouts, PowerTray may be the right tool for the job.