Board membership
This is the most important idea in DeskDrawer, and the one most often misunderstood by people coming from organizers that physically sort files into folders.
The rule#
Your desktop is a folder on disk. DeskDrawer does not change what is in that folder. When you drag an icon from one board to another, exactly one thing happens: DeskDrawer updates a line in config.json recording the new board. The file does not move. Its path does not change. Every shortcut, recent-files entry, backup rule and script that pointed at it still works.
Consequences worth knowing#
- Uninstalling is safe. Remove DeskDrawer and every file is exactly where it always was. See Uninstalling.
- Membership can outlive the file. If a file is deleted outside DeskDrawer, its membership entry is simply dropped the next time the desktop is read.
- Renaming is fine. DeskDrawer follows the item, so a renamed file stays on its board.
- A file added to the desktop by any other program — a browser download, an installer, a script — appears on the Default board automatically.
Why it is built this way#
Because a desktop organizer that moves files is a filing system, and a filing system that a user did not consciously design is a way to lose things. Keeping membership out of the file system means the worst case for a DeskDrawer bug is a board that looks wrong, never a file in the wrong place.