Just a few weeks left until Christmas and the holiday season, but still plenty of time to get your Windows desktop all decorated! Christmas is the top holiday for skinning, so we have quite a large variety of WindowBlinds skin, DeskScapes animated wallpaper, CursorFX cursor themes, wallpapers and much more available to change nearly every aspect of your PC desktop.

Once you get your PC all ready, head over to our December screenshot thread and show us how you decorated your desktop!

Here are some recommended holiday themes!

Christmas Joy by LightStar (WindowBlinds)

Xmas Holiday by don5318 (WindowBlinds)

Here Comes Santa by joyton (DeskScapes animated wallpaper)

Christmas Elf by Libardo (CursorFX)

ChristmasTime by mormegil (IconPackager)

Tangled Christmas Lights by WC_Bot (Wallpaper)

Christmas Lights by Island Dog (Desktop Gadget)

A recent surge in coronavirus cases here in Michigan sees me once again working from home. Fortunately, the work I do at Stardock is pretty easily taken remote, but that doesn’t mean that certain tools don’t make that transition easier. I am, of course, talking about Fences.

In a previous blog, I gave a rundown of a bunch of the really cool customization options that Fences has to offer - but I couldn’t cover everything. I wanted to share a little bit about how I separate my workspace from my playspace while it’s all contained on the same machine, while at the same time sharing a few other Fences customization tidbits. 

I would like you to know, also, that this shuffling of icons and creation of Fences was a relatively recent idea. The last work from home stint I was on, I pretty much lived in chaos: icons everywhere, mingled, mixed, and not at all matched. I’ve decided to start with a clean slate and try something new this time around. Let’s have a look!

The “Play” Monitor

This is my primary monitor. I’ve chosen to keep all of my personal stuff in fences here, making it easy for me to find while also keeping it separate from work stuff (which I’ll show you shortly). Also, don’t judge me on my gaming choices - I tried Fortnite as a favor to a friend (what I’ll never admit is how much fun I had with it, don’t @ me!).

My desktop background reflects my “play” aspect - it’s a screenshot from Final Fantasy XIV, a game I spend too much a lot of time on. I chose to keep all the Fences uniform in color and separate all of my stuff into fairly straightforward and easy-to-navigate categories.

It took me a little bit of time to clean up all of the icons I had just sitting on my desktop and organize them into this, but honestly I think it was time well spent. I also went into my Fences “sorting and organizing” options and directed where certain file types will go: for example, I adjusted it so that any saved images I have will go straight to my Pictures and Media Fence, where I can easily find it and place it where I want it to go from there.

I may fiddle with it more later, but right now I’m happy with where it’s at.

The “Work” Monitor

For the most part, I just need a word processor to perform the primary part of my job function. That said, when I write, I have to write about something - and usually that means making sure I have certain software installed so that I can explore them, much like I am now. 

We also wear many hats here at Stardock, which means that there are certain other functions I perform that require other programs like, for example, XSplit. There are also some folders that I access frequently via our VPN, so I created Folder Portals for them on my desktop so I don’t have to constantly go digging through Explorer for them. You can see that I have them rolled up here to conserve space.

On another note: did you know that all your fences don’t have to be uniform? I decided to have a little bit of fun with my work monitor and choose a colorful background with enough black that would make the different colors I’ve chosen for my fences really pop. 

I love this separation of work and play because it lets me find things easily and helps me to segment my work from my leisure time (since I spend a lot of leisure time at my PC to begin with anyway). 

Side by Side

You can see that the two monitors are extremely contrasted. I did that on purpose as a bit of a mental trick that would help me further separate the two and their varied functions. I’m not really sure that it actually works that way, but since I’ve convinced myself that it does, that should be good enough, right?

Oh, I should also mention: the reason I’m able to apply two different backgrounds to two different monitors is all thanks to DeskScapes. I’m not using anything animated right now, but one of my favorite features of DeskScapes is being able to use animated backgrounds on my PC, so definitely check that out if you haven’t!

A Fun Discovery

I’ve written a lot about our software, especially lately, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t discover something new from time to time. 

I knew, for example, that Start10 perfectly integrates with Fences. What I didn’t realize, though, was that the Fences labels in the Start menu would actually match the colors that I’ve selected for the individual fences! Cool, right?

This is how I’ve made Fences work for me on multiple monitors, especially as I work from home. Do you use Fences more at work or at home, or equally at both? Share with me!

Can you believe it's December already? I'm excited as the weather is getting cooler here and we're officially in Christmas season! But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's look back at the highlights of November.

Here's a wrap-up of some new, articles, forum posts, and skins you might have missed!

Community Posts You Might Have Missed:

Getting an Early Start on a Christmas Themed Desktop!

Inexplicable Monolith Discovered in Utah's Red Rock Country

For Workflow Efficiency, Look no Further than Groupy

Fences: Making Desktop Customization Work for YOU

Revisiting a Christmas Skinning Classic....ChristmasTime

New and Updated Skins, Themes, and Wallpapers:

MODEL 6IX (CursorFX)

atomic CHARGE (CursorFX)

Windows 11 Light (Curtains)

Relaxing Night (DeskScapes)

River bend_4K (Wallpaper)

Snowman in Winter Ice (Wallpaper)

ENvisionPRO (WindowBlinds)

Techie (WindowBlinds)

I was searching through WinCustomize looking at some Christmas skins and I came across what I think is one of the most classic skins of Christmas. That of course would be ChristmasTime by mormegil!

The WindowBlinds skin was first released way back in 2003 for the Stardock 2003 Christmas Suite.  At that time, WindowBlinds 4 was the latest version and it was later updated to support WindowBlinds 5 which brought support for per-pixel alpha blending, toolbar button changing, progress animation improvements, animated per-pixel Start menus, title bars, and much more.

I used this skin for many holidays years after it was released and is one of my top five favorites of all time. It was hugely popular back then and was the base for many desktops around that time. In addition to the WindowBlinds skin, Paul (mormegil) came out with a lite and full icon pack that was just as amazing. As of today, the WB skin alone has over 400,000 downloads!

Download here:

WindowBlinds

IconPackage

Wallpaper

Members of the community (with permission) also created some matching themes. 

CursorFX by Keila

Calendar by _Martin_

Snowflakes by _Martin_

Since we're revisiting this skin, I installed the skins on my Windows 10 PC to see how they work many years after they were released. So how do they look? Well not too bad for such old skins.

For the WB skin the most obvious issue is the taskbar, but that is to be expected with all the changes since Windows XP. Icons applied simply fine and worked. The CursorFX theme also worked with no issues that I noticed. Even though there are some minor issues, this still brings back great skinning memories and I think I'll keep it around for a while.

Do you remember the Christmas Time suite? Let us know in the comments below! 

We make a lot of software here at Stardock, and while all of it is wonderful and useful in their own ways, there are just a couple of programs that I consider my “ride or dies” for my PC experience. Fences is absolutely at the top of that list (followed very closely by Groupy).

The basic functionality of organizing my icons, folders, and programs into fenced in areas on my PC desktop is great enough on its own, but the more I explored Fences I began to realize that there was quite a lot more that I could do with it, especially aesthetically. With all of the customization options available in the program, you really can make your desktop look exactly how you like it.

Let’s take a look at some of the cool stuff you can do!

Color Customization

This one is fairly straightforward, but is probably one of my most favorite options: colors. I can adjust the color of my Fences (both as a group or individually!) to complement the background that I’m using on my Desktop.

There are a lot of options available here. You can adjust the transparency, color intensity, tint, and saturation of your fences using the sliding scale, choosing to either apply the options uniformly across all of your fences, or individually to a select few. You can color code your fenced areas if that’s something that helps for organization - or if you just want a myriad rainbow of color on your desktop, that’s valid too!

You can achieve drastically different effects by choosing varying levels of saturation and transparency. Below, I have an image that shows a more solid fence without the transparent effect, plus you can also see that I have an option enabled that hides labels unless I mouse over them.

You can also adjust the font colors of your fences labels, which leads me into the next set of options you have…

Label Text and Size

You can customize the labels to your fences in lots of different ways besides just what you name them. The color and size of your fonts can change, as well as the font itself. Many of the options you’d find in any Word processor are available in the Fences option menu. Several of them allow for variations like bolding and italicizing if you feel like it.

I like to adjust my colors and fonts to match whatever I choose for my background. I’m a pretty big Dungeons and Dragons nerd, so I think the medieval script font goes nicely with this image of one of my first ever original characters, Tatiora, that my friend Leo drew for me a couple years ago. 

You can also change the font color if you want, though I find that usually keeping it simple with white allows me to read the labels more easily. I also keep my fonts sized somewhere in the middle (in this case, I believe I selected size 16), but you can go bigger or smaller if that suits your needs better.

Speaking of needs, let’s say you prefer a little less noise on your desktop and like to hide away excess things. You can do that!

Visibility

I personally like seeing my Fences and my labels - it makes it easier for me to find what I’m looking for. But, if you’re not into that, there’s ways you can work around it while still keeping your icons and programs grouped together so you can access them quickly.

By taking the transparency all the way down to 0, you can make it so that your fences don’t show up at all, but your icon groupings remain within their fenced areas. You can leave labels on, set them so that they only show when you mouse over them, or even turn the labels off altogether. 

Let’s say you don’t like your icons showing, either - you’re all about a clean desktop! You have a couple options for that. You can either double-click on your desktop to hide everything (don’t panic if you do this by accident - not that I would know from experience or anything - another double-click will return them all), or you can change the preferences in your individual fences to make the icons transparent. 

As you can see in the image above, I’ve lightened the visibility on some of the fences to make them hard to see. To do this, you go to the title bar of one of your fences, click on the options icon on the left, and go to view > opacity. You can make a fence completely invisible until you mouse over it, if that’s what works for you.

I’d also like to mention the option for rolling up fences. If you want to keep your desktop uncluttered but still see where you’ve put everything, you can double-click on a Fences title bar to hide the rest of the fence so that just the bar is visible.

As you can see, there's a lot you can do to keep your desktop neat and orderly with Fences! There's just one more thing I want to touch on that goes beyond just aesthetic customization, and that's...

Organization and Sorting

In a previous blog, I talked a little bit about Folder Portals and what makes them so helpful, so I’m going to focus on another indispensable aspect of organization: the sorting option.

There are a ton of options here for editing rules on how icon placement and auto-organizing will work. You can choose to make rules for everything from folders to program shortcuts that will determine what fence they sort into when they’re added to your computer. 

For example, I have my images set to go directly into my Pictures fence whenever I save an image file to my desktop. It makes it easier for me to find them and then make sure they get into the correct folder that I want. I also do the same for program shortcuts. For general downloads, I actually just make a Folder Portal on my desktop so that I can easily access anything that I download.

You can be really broad with these rules, or get extremely particular. I play pretty loose and wild with my desktop to begin with (in fact, before I set up rules for where images sort to, my desktop was getting really crowded) so I don’t fuss over it too much personally, but you definitely can!

Fences is one of those programs that I don’t think I can ever stop using. It has made my desktop organizing so much easier and it makes my desktop look better overall.

Don’t have Fences yet? No problem, just download it here. Or, if you want to go full throttle with desktop enhancement, customization, and optimization, just get a low-cost membership to Object Desktop and get access to a bunch of our top-rated software all at once.

If you’re already a Fences user, I want to see it in action on your desktops. Share some screenshots with me! 

Happy Thanksgiving! If you partake in Thanksgiving what's your favorite way to cook the turkey?

Roasted, fried, smoked?

Let us know your cooking plans and have a safe and wonderful day!

For many of us, Thanksgiving is this week, so we wanted to send out a Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and a big thanks to our community. No holiday needed, just wanted to say we appreciate you! Although it's a weird time in the world, we do hope you have a nice holiday. Let us know if you have any holiday plans, or if you just have a nice weekend lined up.

Let us know in the comments below!

Is there really anyone here who isn't tired of the sounds when using Windows? 

In comes SoundPackager. I always relate SoundPackager to IconPackager simply because both use "packages" to change their respective items. One of the best things about SoundPackager is that not only does it change a bunch of system sounds at once, it also allows you fine tune the sounds and easily add or delete specific sounds if you wish.

Now that you have heard all that good stuff, let's go through using SoundPackager.

Interface
SoundPackager has an exceptionally clean and easy to use interface. On the left side of the window, you have the navigation for SoundPackager.  The Welcome screen gives you a brief introduction and gives info such as the current version number.

Installing and Changing Sounds 
The Sound Packs screen shows you which icon packs you have installed.  

If you want to install a new sound pack that you downloaded from WinCustomize, just double-click the .soundpack file and it will install into SoundPackager.   

When you select an individual sound pack you have a few details you can use such as the author information and description. You will also have an apply button, edit button, and a play button where you can sample the sound pack.

To change your system sounds, either double-click the package you want to apply or select the sound package and hit the "Apply sound pack" and your new sounds will be applied and ready to use!

More Sounds
You know how to change your sounds, but what's the point if you can't find more sound packs, right?  Well, no problem there, as WinCustomize has an entire library dedicated to sound packs for SoundPackager. You can quickly get to the gallery by clicking the "Get More Packages" button in the "More Packages" section in SoundPackager.

Better yet, SoundPackager has built-in integration with WinCustomize so you can browse and download the latest sound packs right from SoundPackager! Just select the Online tab and see all the latest packs.

Edit Sounds

SoundPackager makes it easy to edit and create new sound packages. You can even share these with other users to enjoy as well!

The edit screen allows you to view the available sounds in Windows and other sound packs. You can then change those sounds to your own files and save that sound pack to use in SoundPackager.

So, there you go! A straightforward way to change your Windows sounds with creative and cool sound packs that will add another level to your desktop customization experience.

Don't have SoundPackager yet? Get it here. You can also purchase a low-cost membership to Object Desktop to get SoundPackager, plus a bunch of other fantastic productivity and customization apps for your PC.

Happy Friday! I was sitting here trying to straighten up my work area before the work week ends and thought maybe that should be the part of the topic for this week's question.

I have my main desktop PC which I mostly use for gaming and design work. My Dell XPS laptop is really just dedicated for work stuff, and I also have an iPad on my desk for casual web browsing and keeping up with emails. 

We have a desktop workstation thread here on the forums, and we've seen some really cool setups there, but we wanted to ask how do you have your PC and work area setup.

Do you have a desktop PC, or are you more mobile with a laptop? Or do you go for it all and have several?

Back at the beginning of quarantine, I talked a little bit about how Groupy helped me work from home. It saves me the desk space of having to juggle around too many monitors by letting me use my two-monitor setup more efficiently. 

It’s about more than just saving space, though. Groupy allows me to sort my work into categories, making it easier for me to compartmentalize what I’m working on, especially when I have several tasks working all at the same time.

To be honest, I have pretty simple needs when it comes to what I do for work on the computer. I live in word documents - Google docs, specifically - and so initially I thought that Groupy couldn’t do a whole lot for me since they’re all tabbed in my web browser anyway.

I was wrong.

At times, I will be working on multiple products or releases at once. I’m scatterbrained on a good day, so it is sometimes really difficult to keep track of all of the things I need to get done before my deadlines are up. To make it easier for myself, I can split my browser tabs into different group categories, separating the work I’m doing on, say, Stardock Magazine and the work I’m doing on The Political Machine release.

I often will reference old materials when working on something new, just so that I make sure I am delivering a consistent message and I’m not missing any crucial details. Above, you can see how I’ve chosen to sort my work: I have a tab filled with web browser tabs all dedicated to my work on Stardock Magazine, a tab filled with tabs relating to The Political Machine, and a tab filled with tabs of old forum posts that I can reference for products as I work.

I also use Microsoft Teams quite a bit in order to collaborate with the rest of the marketing team. To make things easy on myself, I pop out the chats for the key people I talk to during a workday and put them all into one group along with my main teams window. This way, I have quick access to all of the conversations important to my workflow, without having to spend a ton of time searching. 

Teams will automatically place a “popped out” chat Window into a tab within the group, too, which is just a small added bonus. 

Here's a close-up of what my Teams tabs look like. I also have Discord added into this group, because I like to keep any chat programs I'm using together. This works really well for me when I have a lot going on (which is often). I've mentioned it in a previous blog before, but Groupy also comes in super handy for me when I'm streaming either at home or at the office.

My teammate Jillian recently started using Groupy to help her manage all of her Explorer windows and the many projects she works on in Visual Studio. Visual Studio doesn't have an inherent way of keeping multiple projects tabbed and open at the same time like Adobe Photoshop does, for example.

She told me this morning, "I always thought Groupy was neat but never really tried it out because I thought, 'I work the way I work, and I have enough multi-monitor space, I don't need that.' But it's really awesome for being able to get to stuff quickly and not have to do a bunch of clicking around."

Whenever I stream, I need no less than about 8 tasks open at a time: about 3 Teams chats, the stream chat itself, several documents that have all of the information I need for the stream (usually ID numbers and process walk-throughs so I don't miss anything), and of course I need X-split open as well. 

Normally, all of those web browser tabs would group together and be its own tab within this group. However, I separated them so I can more easily see each of them while I have X-split active, rather than having to select my web browser tab and then search the Chrome tabs in there to find what I need.

Sometimes I also keep multiple Explorer windows open when I stream so that I can share art or other pieces quickly, if the stream calls for it. The main thing here is that Groupy is super versatile, and I can adjust it however I want in order to suit my needs on a given day.

Groupy can also be extremely helpful when you're dealing with graphic or video design projects. I'm the writer on the marketing team here, so I don't have anything to do with the graphic design side of things, but my two teammates do. Like me, they can find themselves designing for multiple projects all at once, which is where Groupy can come in handy.

They can keep design programs like Photoshop or Illustrator open together and add tabs into that group with all of the folders containing their source material so that it's easy to find. For me, I use Groupy to help me work through the sometimes dozens of assets that I need for projects in Adobe Premiere.

How do you use Groupy to keep yourself organized? Share your experience with us!

Don't have Groupy yet? Get it here. You can also purchase a low-cost membership to Object Desktop to get Groupy, plus a bunch of other fantastic productivity and customization apps for your PC.