As we close in on the first days of summer, it's always fun to pick and feature some of our favorite wallpapers that you can use on your desktop. Of course, there's no reason you can't download these and use them on your various mobile devices as well!

Here are five of our favorite summer wallpapers!

Seaside Relaxation

Canopy on the Beach

Rolling Wave

Tropical Beach from Above

Summer Countryside

WindowBlinds is one of our software products that has been around for quite a long time - longer than I've been at Stardock, at any rate! If you're unfamiliar with it, WindowBlinds allows you to customize the look and feel of your taskbar, window frames, and more. You can make your desktop look unique by choosing from several different styles and skins and adjusting them to suit your personal tastes.

I think one of my absolute favorite features of WindowBlinds 10 is the randomization. If I like a bunch of skins, I can use this option to have my computer cycle through them at random intervals, giving me a fresh look and a bit of a surprise every time I boot up. The per-application skinning is great for variety, too - I can use one skin for my word processing software, and use a different skin for something like Premiere.

But, I digress! Recently, we've been developing some new skins for WindowBlinds and today I get to give you a little sneak peek of what's coming. PLEASE NOTE: These are not 100% final and some aspects of these may change before they are available.

Let's have a look!

Aero Executive

NeXTSTEP

Open Windows

AbraCadabra

Aero Metal

Aquarium

Dragon

Elegance

Aero Midnight

Airframe

Driftwood

Parchment

PlasticXP

Whew! That's a lot of new skins. They'll be available soon, but in the meantime, let me ask you this: which one is your favorite? Share with me!

Over the weekend, a friend shared an article discussing the new Amazon Sidewalk service that will be debuting as an experiment on June 8th. If you live in the U.S. and use Alexa, Echo, or any other Amazon device (this includes Ring doorbells, security cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, etc.) you will be automatically enrolled in this service unless you manually opt out.

This new wireless mesh service will share a small bit of your Internet bandwidth with nearby neighbors who don't have connectivity and will help you to their bandwidth when you don't, too. Amazon's website claims that Amazon Sidewalk can help your devices "work better at home and beyond the front door. When enabled, Sidewalk can unlock unique benefits for your device, support other Sidewalk devices in your community, and even locate pets or lost items."

The goal of Sidewalk is to help devices work better by simplifying new device setups, extending the low-bandwidth working range of devices to better locate things with Tile trackers, and help devices stay online even if they are outside of the range of the home wi-fi. Amazon says users should participate in the experiment because it helps your devices get connected and stay connected, and there are no fees charged for this service.

The first thing I thought when I saw this (other than my security concerns) was, "how much is this going to affect my personal wireless bandwidth?" According to Amazon, "the maximum bandwidth of a Sidewalk Bridge to the Sidewalk server is 80Kbps, which is about 1/40th of the bandwidth used to stream a typical high definition video. Today, when you share your Bridge’s connection with Sidewalk, total monthly data used by Sidewalk, per account, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video."

Amazon has published a white paper detailing Sidewalk and all of its benefits. Users have been assured that data is encrypted and privacy is protected, but I'm personally not so sure that I want to participate in this experiment. You can opt-out your devices using their associated apps, and I think that I will be doing that myself. If you're also looking to opt out of this service, here are some instructions on how to do so:

Where can I change my Amazon Sidewalk preferences?
Ring customers who own an eligible device can choose to update their Amazon Sidewalk preferences anytime from the Control Center in the Ring app or Ring website. Echo customers who own an eligible device can update their Amazon Sidewalk preferences anytime from Settings in the Alexa app. If you have linked your Ring and Amazon accounts, your Sidewalk preferences on either your Alexa or Ring app will apply to all of your eligible Echo and Ring devices.

Amazon also provided a white paper detailing all of the service's security measures which you can read here.

What do you think - are you absolutely opting out of this service, or does it sound appealing to you? I would love to hear your thoughts in order to better inform my own decision on this.

June is here and summer will be officially here soon! I think it's going to be a hot one, and I'm going to keep some beach and tropical themes on my desktop! With a new month brings a new desktop screenshot thread, so post your desktop screenshot in the forum and lets us know what skins you are using!

Post your desktops to the monthly thread here: https://forums.wincustomize.com/505165/

(This is a news thread and will be locked. Screenshot taken by Chasbo)

We are less than a month away from the official start of summer, and we've been talking about it over the past few weeks here. Last week, we looked at some animated wallpapers for you beach lovers, and today we'll look at some WindowBlinds skins for that same summer theme.

If you have a favorite skin that you use for summer, let us know in the comments below and be sure to post them in our monthly desktop screenshot thread here.

Beach

Summer Green

Summer Slice

Tropicali

DeskScapes 11 is currently in beta and although there are a lot of fantastic new features, one in particular is my personal favorite: playlists.

In the newest version of our popular customization app, you can set different backgrounds - both animated and static - to a playlist that will cycle in and out at intervals of your choice. I have a lot of interests and things that I love, so sometimes choosing just one of something is tough for me. I usually will manually change out my desktop background a few times a month or so - but now I don’t have to!

Let’s go through a few of the settings and get you on your way to setting up your own background playlists.

Choose Your Backgrounds

If you’re going to start a playlist, it makes sense to start with having an idea in mind of what backgrounds you’d like to include in it. There are thousands of backgrounds to choose from on WinCustomize.com, but maybe you have a few hundred photos from that awesome trip you took, or that family reunion you visited that you’d like to use. 

That’s great, and there’s an easy way to access them in DeskScapes. First and foremost, you’ll want to make sure that all of your pictures you’ll want to use are easily accessible in a Folder on your PC. Then, on the main menu, click on “Settings” down at the bottom. Go to the “Manage Folders” option and once you open that menu, choose the “Add…” option to put a new folder on the menu. You can also select and deselect folders from this menu to control what shows up on your DeskScapes UI.

If you want to use backgrounds other than personal photographs or videos, you can browse the entire WinCustomize library right from within the DeskScapes app. You can browse via categories, popular author, and by latest updated or uploaded. There’s also a section that keeps track of all the backgrounds you’ve favorited so that you can find them easily when you need them. 

Once you’ve found some backgrounds you like - either from your personal camera or from within the app - you’re ready to move onto the next step.

Make Your Playlist

Go to the “Playlists” tab on the main menu of DeskScapes. If you already have some playlists made, they’ll appear there - but for our purposes, let’s select “Create New Playlist” and go from there.

Once you name your playlist, it will appear in the menu below and you can edit it. You have a few options here - you can import backgrounds one at a time, selecting from different folders. If you’re going to use backgrounds you’ve downloaded from DeskScapes, make sure you know the folder directory they’re all saving in so that you can add them here. 

TIP: If you’re not sure where a background saved to, you can check it in DeskScapes by selecting the background and looking at the file directory listed to the right of the thumbnail image. 

If you have an entire folder worth of pictures or backgrounds you’d like the playlist to cycle through, you can add an entire folder to the playlist. 

Choose your Intervals

Once you’ve imported all of the images or videos you’d like to use in your playlist, it’s time to choose how often it will cycle from one thing to the next. You can set it to change only when you login/reapply, every 30 seconds, every few minutes, every hour, and so on. There are plenty of options to suit your preferred speed!

Choose Where it Applies

If you work with multiple monitors, DeskScapes gives you the fantastic option of applying different wallpapers - and, now, playlists! - to each of them. You can also choose to apply the playlist as a screensaver. In theory, since I work with 2 monitors, I could have 2 different playlists running, one on each, plus a separate one for my screensaver. 

Am I extra enough for that? Yeah, probably. Don’t judge me! 

Explore DeskScapes for Yourself

Playlists are just one of the fun and fantastic features in DeskScapes 11. You can make your own animated backgrounds using the in-app DreamMaker Pro, alter static backgrounds with dozens of cool effects, and much more! If you're an Object Desktop member, you can get into the beta right now. Not a member? You can get Object Desktop here. 

Have you tried the Playlists feature in DeskScapes yet? Tell me about it!

We recently announced the brand new DeskScapes 11 (the beta is available exclusively through Object Desktop). Users can animate their desktop backgrounds, add customization to personal photos and tons more. While we're in the beta phase, we encourage users to submit bugs and suggested changes. Head over to this thread.

Beta 2 Changelog:

• Fixes issue with the 4K flag on some dreams showing incorrectly
• Alters screensavers to terminate process vs exit on mouse move etc
• Fixes issue with screensaver applied message up and being able to make app look hung
• Tweak to wallpaper change detection
• Tweak for performance loading up playlists
• Small tweak to the font size on search checkboxes
• May fix issue with remote desktop - should no longer pause
• New option for playlists where it will change either after X seconds if non-video or when the video ends (if a video)
  User-submitted request: https://forums.stardock.com/504876/
• Now has options to update playlists if new files added (must read folder)
• Installer tweaks

The sun is out and it's time to start looking for a place to have a nice vacation at! If you can't travel yet, you can turn your desktop background into an animated paradise with DeskScapes. With DeskScapes you can download and use a wide variety of animated and static wallpapers to turn your desktop into a tropical paradise, or anything else you would like!

Check out some of our favorites, and find more in the DeskScapes gallery here.

Hawaiian Sunset Cafe

Day at the Beach (Triggered)

Tropical Beach from Above

Grand Turk Waves

I’m really not much of an artist.

To be frank, saying “not much of an artist” is being a little too kind to myself. I once drew a dog at the request of a 6 year old, who, upon me finishing my drawing, looked up at me and said, “I don’t know what that is, but that’s not a dog.” Kids and their brutal honesty!

While I’m not good at making something out of nothing, if given the right tools I can occasionally create some fun visual things. Fortunately for me - and all of you! - DeskScapes 11 gives me an amazing creator studio right inside the app, filled with tools for creating the perfect background for my Windows desktop. Let’s take a look at how to make an animated background - called a Dream - for DeskScapes together!

Getting Started

You’ll start by clicking “Create Animated Background” on the left-side menu in the app. You’ll have an option to choose an existing template or start with a completely blank slate. At the top, the options for “Package video as dream file,” “Upload Video Background,” and “Upload Static Background,” will allow you to put your finished creations up on WinCustomize - but more about that later. Let’s start creating!

Import a Picture

I started with a blank slate for mine because I wanted to animate a beautiful digital painting my friend Leo made for me. To get started, I just needed to double-click on the blank option in the menu, then import the image I wanted to alter.

Now that I had my image selected and ready to go (you can also do this with a short video!), it was time to get started!

Select Your Effects

I had been thinking for a while that it might look cool to add a flickering effect to the purple glows in the picture, so when I opened up the dream creator that was one of the first things I planned on looking for. Once I got my bearings, I found the “add animation” bar at the top, which gives you several options to flip through.

Animated Objects
This section will let you place different kinds of objects on your static or video background. There are tons of options - things like clouds, lightning bolts, fire, light beams, and quite a lot more.

Animated Brushes
These brushes will apply overall effects to your background. You can select something like “Day to Night” and make your image lighten and darken at custom intervals, or choose a drift or flow brush for some other wild effects. The pattern brushes have fun things like stars or hearts and will let you overlay them across your image by painting specific areas.

Airbrushes
These brushes will give you a wide spray of cool effects to apply all over your background. You can control where they go, and even change the size of the spray so that you can be more precise.

Text
There is a selection of fonts here that you can customize with words or phrases of your choice. You can adjust spacing, color, alignment, and more to get it just the way you like it.

Particle Systems
These options have lots of particle effects that you can apply and customize. You can alter the angle and location of where certain effects fall, too.

Lines
You can apply colored and animated lines on your backgrounds with this. You can control how long they are, where they curve and angle, and other aspects of how they look.

Customize, Customize, Customize

Nearly every effect has some level of customization, from speed, to size, to color, and so much more. I found a cool particle effect to surround the character’s sword and changed the color to match all of the purple magic particles in the image (which I also overlaid with some particle animations to make them pop). 

I played around with the effects' colors, sizes, shapes, and frequency of flashing. I was able to adjust the transparency of the effect on the sword so that it fades at one end and appears brighter at the other. After a bit of tinkering, I ended up with a result I was pretty happy with.

Obviously it's difficult to see the full effect of the animations from a static image like this, but I really love what came out of all of my experimenting. It's subtle and it flows into the overall picture very nicely. The Dream Maker Pro tool is included in DeskScapes 11 and, as you can see, offers you so much in terms of what you can do with it. If you're not into making your own Dreams, not to worry - there are thousands to choose from at WinCustomize.com, which you can browse through right from within DeskScapes 11.

What does your desktop background look like? Show me some screenshots!

It seems like not long ago we were posting this similar article about spring. Well summer arrives in a little over a month, and I think it's going to be a hot one. Summer is a fun season to skin as there are a variety of WindowBlinds skins, animated wallpapers for DeskScapes, CursorFX themes and more you can use! There are also plenty of landscape wallpapers to have your desktop feel like it's on a tropical vacation.

We'll be showing off and featuring more summer inspired skins soon, but please leave any favorites in the comments below!

Beach (WindowBlinds)

Tropical Beach Under the Coconut Palm (DeskScapes animated wallpaper)

Net Surfer (CursorFX)

Seaside Relaxation (Wallpapers)