Add warning for automatically adding a hook at the OS level for common shortcut key combinations

[laurinkeithdavis]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

As noted on the JetBrains forum (https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/11893546874258-Code-Completion-keyboard-shortcut-not-working-) and on Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/q/76444491/1376939), many users were surprised to find out that their CTRL+SPACE key combination suddenly stopped working. I had no idea and was at a loss until another user happened to spot the change made by an update to PowerToys, that when Peek was added, prevented use of CTRL+SPACE by other applications.

Scenario when this would be used?

During installation, disable these by default and/or provide some kind of obvious warning. Not just something in the change log either, as I rarely read those for this app (too many changes).

Supporting information

I even submitted this as a defect in PhpStorm before I was told it was caused by PowerToys:

IDEA-322187 CTRL+SPACE key combination no longer works

[CrossBread]

Agreed. It may not be the case all the time, but Ctrl+Space is a critically common keymap (Autocomplete in most IDEs) for the exact sort of users that would be likely to download a fabulous tool like PowerToys.

At minimum, only eating the key combination while File Explorer has focus would be ideal.

If Peek functionality is actually extended outside of just File Explorer Windows+Space would make more sense and be less likely to collide with standard keystrokes from other developer tools.

[crutkas]

We are also rethinking the upgrade notification experience. We do call out things like this in release notes, https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.70.0 which are the notes we pull in the upgrade dialog. We do directly state that we use ctrl-space but the rethinking would be far more aggressive. It would also possibly replace the "general" page. It still won't help a user from closing out the dialogs nor would this have helped the bug slipping through.

We refined our testing to be sure this issue won't happen again too

I'm going to close this against #26816 for tracking this issue

[CrossBread]

@crutkas

We do call out things like this in release notes, https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.70.0 which are the notes we pull in the upgrade dialog. We do directly state that we use ctrl-space ...

I actually did read the release notes and saw that note and thought it would be a useful addition. But what wasn't clear is that Ctrl-Space would be captured at the OS level, not just for File Explorer. I don't know if that was just a bug in this case, or if that's how all PowerToys shortcuts work, but that side-effect in essence is the "missing" warning.

(I'm not sure where it is best to capture that little nugget of feedback, so I'm just commenting here on a closed issue. 😅)

[crutkas]

I take the feedback serious. If the bug wasn’t there, would you have raised a concern?

[CrossBread]

I don't think so if the bug is that the shortcut was being captured regardless of the focused application.

I've been using PowerToys for quite a while now and I haven't encountered any similar issues. If the Peek feature only applied to File Explorer I think we'd be golden. Alternatively, if the shortcut were Win+Space the chance of a collision with a common developer shortcut would at least be far less.