Tag Archives: desktop customization

Quickly Set Any Solid Color As Desktop Background With LoneColor

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Being a blogger and someone who tests software as his primary job, screenshots are quite vital to my work. Along with adding a visual aspect to my reviews, they also help users easily understand the things I try to demonstrate. Therefore, something that has so much importance needs to be done with carefully chosen backgrounds and optimum quality. Speaking of backgrounds, a solid background color often aids in presenting things more clearly, but constantly moving back and forth between plain colored backgrounds and other wallpapers can itself be a waste of time. Recently I stumbled upon a great software labeled LoneColor and it happened to be quite a time saver in my work. The application allows changing the background to any solid color like yellow, pink, green, black etc. with a mere click. Lets find out how it works. Read More

DeskScapes 8 Brings Wallpaper Effects, Animated & Video Backgrounds To Windows 8

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It seems Stardock is paying very close attention to Windows 8. After creating some wonderful apps like Decor8 and ModernMix and selling thousands of Start8 copies, the company has also updated its DeskScapes utility for Microsoft's latest OS. DeskScapes 8 is not only a nice addition to Stardocks' fascinating line of customization tools, but it’s also one of the most powerful wallpaper personalization app for Windows 8. The application puts various enticing desktop backgrounds at your disposal, letting you apply static, panoramic as well as Windows Vista’s Dreamscene-like animated wallpapers to your desktop. Keep reading! Read More

Add Windows 8 Start Screen-Like Metro Tiles To Desktop Using XWidget

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XWidget is quite a popular application that lets you add some extraordinarily beautiful widgets to your desktop screen, similar to Windows Vista’s gadgets. You can customize the widgets in a lot of ways. Although it includes some preinstalled widgets out of the box, you can download and use a truckload of additional ones developed by XWidget’s user community. One such widget that I recently came across is Windows 8 ShorCut Small by Ubeto. It lets you add Windows 8 Start Screen-like tiles to the Desktop, and can especially compliment your setup if you have followed our guide to give a Modern UI makeover to your Desktop. Read More

7+ Taskbar Tweaker: The Best Tool To Customize Windows Taskbar

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A lot of people like to customize Windows according to their own preferences. Simple customization such as wallpapers and themes can be controlled through the default options available in the operating system. However, in order to perform unconventional tweaks, you often have to edit Windows Registry and configure Local Group Policy settings. If you don’t want to manually tweak the Windows Registry or LGPE, some application allow you to perform the same tweaks using a convenient, easy-to-understand interface. Previously, we have covered some feature-rich tweaking utilities for Windows 7 such as Sunrise Seven that provides you with a long list of Windows 7 tweaks accessible from a unified interface and Simple Performance Boost, a tool to increase system response time and ensure stability through only the safest tweaks that do not compromise the security or functioning of the system. Today, we have another such tool called 7+ Taskbar Tweaker that works on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 and allows you to perform several tweaks related to the Windows Taskbar. Read More

Set Wallpaper To Automatically Change By Time, Mouse State Or At Logon

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Changing your Windows wallpaper helps keep your desktop fresh with a new look every now and then, as keeping the same one for long makes the look rather stagnant. One way to change the wallpaper is to select the image in Windows Explorer and choose the “Set as desktop background” option. Furthermore, Windows already offer you to automatically switch the wallpaper after a specified interval under Personalization options, and we have already covered tools like Kuvva for setting a new wallpaper each day, and Mourao Wallpaper Changer for more control over automatically changing it after an interval. However, if you want a trigger other than time for changing the wallpaper, none of these third party tools or the built-in Windows Personalization option do the job. Today, we bring to you a free Windows application by the name of Wallpaper Change Scheduler that allows you to change the wallpaper using different triggers including weekly, daily, on mouse idle, on mouse move and at logon. Read More

Give Your Windows 8 Desktop A Makeover With Rainmeter & RocketDock

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I've always wanted to customize my Windows 7 desktop using Rainmeter to add some interesting look and feel to it, and RocketDock to get rid of the taskbar. But it has never been possible to totally neglect the taskbar, only due to the start menu, which held so many applications in place. In short, I gave up on the idea of customizing my desktop. But since Windows 8 has replaced the Start menu with the Start Screen, I can continue with the customization, and you too can learn how it's done! Read More

Desktop Modify: Arrange Desktop Icons In Geometrical Shapes

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Tired of usual desktop icon layout? Ever wanted your desktop icons arranged in an interesting way? With Desktop Modify, you can fizz up your desktop by making use of over 77 different shapes and styles for arranging icons on it. Using this free application, you can surely make your desktop unique. It enables you to manage your desktop layout by saving snapshots (states) at critical moments, making it easier to recover useful information usually lost due to either personal error or external intervention. This implies that your desktop icon placement can be modified as well as restored with just a click. In addition, you can choose to save multiple desktop icon layouts, so that you can easily switch between them. Read More

Arrange Your Desktop: Sort Media, Documents & Other File Types In A Folder Into Separate Subfolders

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Recently, I came across two of the very useful tools that changed the way I use my PC. One was PySort and the other was IconRestorer. The former would let you automatically organize your files or icons, while the latter is designed to backup and restore the positions of your desktop icons, supporting separate backup for each resolution. Today, another similar program caught my attention, (and literally saved me headaches) which I happened to like as much as the former two. Arrange Your Desktop is a small, yet feature-rich utility that allows you to automatically arrange desktop icons by creating separate folders for images, videos, documents, programs and other types of files. Keep in mind that the application doesn't just work with the desktop but you can employ it for any other folder on your hard drive, should you want to. It’s a handy tool if you want your directories free of clutter and unwanted files. Keep reading for more details. Read More

ViPad: Tabbed Aero UI Launcher For Program Shortcuts And Bookmarks

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With every new version of Windows, Microsoft tries to give it a new faceplate (Windows 8 anyone?), usually with more customization options, eye-candy and enhanced ergonomics to easily access your applications. Some people however, go one step beyond to what the default settings offer, towards the third-party utilities to quickly access their frequently used applications, URLs, and file shortuts. Well, today’s recipe is certainly for those folks who want a gorgeous looking application launcher, with aero glass effect. ViPad is a free application that provides a glass-like window, which houses different tabs to place all your program shortcuts and web bookmarks. Read More

Fully Customize Your Desktop With Rainmeter

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A while back we covered SE-DesktopConstructor, which allows customizing the look of the desktop. Rainmeter, is an even better application for adding widgets and customizing your desktop experience. It enhances the desktop with handy compact applets, which float of the desktop, along with skins that provide information such as CPU performance, clock, news feed, etc. This way users can keep an eye on their RSS feeds list, system resources, online data streams, notes, tweets and do much more from the desktop. Read More