Fences is a powerful application that can help you keep your desktop organized and also make it easier to access your frequently used content. While the application does have a first-run experience to help you get started, I'd like to share five ways that you can get the most out of Fences 4 .

Access Your Downloads on Your Desktop

Folder Portals are a powerful feature that are simple to use. Portals allow you to access any content that is usually found inside of File Explorer, and the easiest way to get started is to create a portal to your Downloads folder.

When you create a portal, any item that is saved in that folder will appear inside the folder portal on your desktop. It’s a simple concept, but it’s incredibly useful for making it easier to access everything you download right from your desktop.

To create a folder portal to your Downloads folder, click and drag anywhere on your desktop. Then, in the drop-down menu that appears, click Folder Portal, and select your Downloads folder.

Once the portal is on your desktop, you can adjust its size and move it to a new location by clicking and dragging the title bar.

Roll-Up

If you like the idea of Fences but don’t want to see your content at all times, there is a helpful feature called Roll-Up that does exactly as the name suggests. It allows you to “roll-up” your fence so that you only see the header.

To enable this feature, double click on the header and it will roll up to create a clean view of your fences and your desktop. To unroll the fence, hover your mouse on the header or double-click it to expand the fence to reveal all the content once again.

Peek

Peek is new to Fences 4 and is an incredibly powerful tool for improving your personal productivity. This easy-to-use feature makes accessing your content only a keystroke away.

Using Peek, you can make Fences appear on top of any content you have on the screen. Better yet, you can also interact with any Fence that appears, which makes it convenient for accessing new files without having to minimize the application you are using.

To access Peek, hold down the Windows key and press/hold the spacebar. If you want to change the hotkeys for this feature, you can do so in the settings menu by launching the Fences application.

Quick Hide

If you have ever scrambled to clean your house because guests are coming over, Quick Hide is the feature for you. As the name suggests, it allows you to quickly hide your desktop icons and folders.

To temporarily clear your desktop, double click on any blank space on the wallpaper and all of your content will disappear. To bring it back, double-click again and all of your content will return to its previous locations.

This is a simple feature, but when you need to clean things up quickly it’s the perfect solution.

Changing Appearance

For your first fences out of the box, we have selected by default the most popular color and arrangement. However, if you want to make them a bit more personalized, you can change many aspects of how the fences appear on your desktop.

After opening up the Fences application, click “Color and appearance”. In this section, you can adjust the color of all your fences, but you also have the option to change the color of individual fences too.

Once you are satisfied with the color options, you can also adjust how and when the labels for each fence appear, whether they will have rounded or squared corners, and many more options.

The key with Fences is that while the default settings are good for most users out of the box, you have the ability to tweak settings to make the application fit your workflow and personality.