What to know

  • PowerToys now lets you preview audio files using the Peek tool.
  • Peek at audio files by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+Space.
  • Support for previewing audio files is available on PowerToys v0.80.0 and later. 

The Peek utility within PowerToys now supports previewing audio files. Starting with PowerToys version 0.80.0, you’ll be able to check out the contents of several audio file formats without having to open them in their dedicated apps. Here’s how to use PowerToys to peek audio files on Windows. 

How to Peek Audio files on Windows using PowerToys

Thanks to support for audio files, you can now use PowerToys to preview them with a simple shortcut and without having to open them in a dedicated app. Here’s how to go about it:

  1. Use the link above to download and install the latest version of PowerToys.
  2. If you already have PowerToys installed, make sure to update it to v0.80.0 (or later) from the ‘General’ tab.
  3. The default Activation shortcut to preview files is Ctrl+Space. But you can change this if you like from Peek > Activation shortcut > Edit icon. 
  4. To preview, simply select the audio file(s). 
  5. Then press the Activation shortcut. 
  6. The Peek window will let you pause/play, change volume, and even Cast to Device. 
  7. If you selected multiple audio files to preview, simply scroll through them to preview them one by one.

Although the changelogs didn’t mention exactly which audio file formats are supported by PowerToys’ Peek tool, we found most common audio formats to work just fine, including WAV, MP3, FLAC, AAC, M4A, OGG, and WMA. 

With the recent PowerToys update, you can now peek a variety of files, including WebP and WebM, all using the same Activations shortcut. Not only does this allow you to quickly preview different types of files without having to open them separately in their dedicated apps, but also preview files that are not supported by Windows Explorer’s own preview panel. 

We hope this guide helped you preview audio files using PowerToys’ Peek utility on Windows. Until next time!