Limitations

What DeskDrawer does not do, what it will not do, and the rough edges that are known and unfixed.

A product page lists what something does. This page lists what it does not, because that is usually what decides whether a tool fits.

Deliberately out of scope#

These are not missing features. They are decisions, and they are what keep the application to one process with no services.

• No automatic filing rules. DeskDrawer does not sort new files into boards by type, name or age. You decide what goes where. Rule engines are the feature that turns an organizer into a filing system you did not design.
• No launcher, dock or widgets. Grouping desktop icons is the whole product.
• No theming or wallpaper engine. Boards take two appearance toggles and nothing else.
• No plugin system. Nothing third-party is loaded into the process. This is also a security position — see Architecture.
• No global hotkeys or rebindable keys. Both need a keyboard hook running for every keystroke on the machine, which is a large permanent cost for a tool meant to be invisible.
• No sync between machines. That would mean an account, a server and network access, which would end the claim in Privacy & data. Copy config.json instead — see Backup & restore.
• No portable build for end users. The Store version is the supported route, because it is signed, it updates itself and it uninstalls cleanly.

Real limitations#

Things that would be better and currently are not:

• Board positions do not survive a display-arrangement change gracefully. Rectangles are stored in screen coordinates, so moving a configuration to a machine with different monitors needs Fix misplaced boards afterwards. See Layout & monitors.
• The configuration format is not a stable API. It may change between versions. Nothing outside DeskDrawer should depend on its shape.
• The application's own strings are English only. This is nearly invisible in normal use because the interface is icon-driven, but error text and error.log are English. See Languages.
• This website and its documentation are English only.
• x64 only. No ARM64 build today.
• No accessibility story for screen readers. Boards are custom-painted surfaces, not standard controls, and their contents are not currently exposed through UI Automation. If you rely on a screen reader for the desktop, DeskDrawer will not serve you well, and pretending otherwise would waste your money.
• A very large desktop takes a moment to show all its icons. Boards appear immediately; icons fill in. See Performance.

Known rough edges#

• A genuinely unreachable network target cannot produce an icon or tooltip until Windows gives up on it. The application stays responsive; that one item does not.
• Heavy sync activity on the desktop folder produces a stream of change notifications, and DeskDrawer honours all of them.

If one of these is a blocker for you, that is useful to know before buying rather than after. The Roadmap says which of them are being looked at.