Documentation
Everything about how DeskDrawer behaves, why it behaves that way, and where it stops. Written by the person who built it.
New here? Start with Getting started. Deciding whether to buy? Limitations is the most useful page on this site.
Start here
Getting started
What happens the first time you run DeskDrawer, and the four things worth doing in your first five minutes.
Installing DeskDrawer
System requirements, what installing actually puts on your machine, and how updates and autostart work.
Boards
Creating, naming, moving, resizing, folding and deleting boards — and what a board stores.
Using DeskDrawer
Menus
DeskDrawer has three menus: its own board menu, its tray menu, and the real Windows context menu. Knowing which is which explains most of the interface.
Sorting a board
Five sort modes, each ascending or descending, set independently per board.
Icon sizes
DeskDrawer offers four icon sizes, set independently for each board, and re-tiles the layout automatically when you change one.
Keyboard and mouse reference
Every gesture and shortcut on a board. Most of them are the ones you already use on the Windows desktop.
Drag and drop
What each kind of drag does, when a file actually moves on disk, and the safeguards around that.
Layout and multiple monitors
How boards behave across several displays, mixed DPI scaling, resolution changes and taskbar moves.
Languages and language independence
DeskDrawer's Store listing is available in 16 languages, and the application itself is designed so that using it depends very little on reading text at all.
Your data
The configuration file
Where DeskDrawer keeps your layout, what is in it, how it is written safely, and whether you should edit it.
Backup, restore and moving to a new PC
Copying one file backs up your entire layout. What transfers cleanly to another machine and what does not.
Privacy and local data
What DeskDrawer stores, what it transmits, and the specific list of things it does not contain.
Uninstalling
How to remove DeskDrawer cleanly, what is left behind (nothing), and how to get your desktop icons back.
Under the hood
Architecture
How DeskDrawer is put together: one process, no services, WinForms over the Windows shell, and the reasoning behind each of those choices.
Windows integration
The specific Windows behaviours DeskDrawer hooks into — the desktop icon layer, Show desktop, Alt+F4, the Share pane, the Recycle Bin — and how each is made to behave correctly.
Performance
What DeskDrawer does to stay responsive on large, cloud-backed and network-connected desktops — and what can still make it slow.
Memory usage
What DeskDrawer holds in memory, the choices that keep that small, and how to measure it on your own machine.
Limitations
What DeskDrawer does not do, what it will not do, and the rough edges that are known and unfixed.