Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to our amazing community! We hope you have a great holiday season and a wonderful new year! 

Thank you for being part of our great community!

It's been quite a while since we've mentioned promotions here in the forums, though a few people have been quietly promoted over the years. As some of you may know (more on this in another post soon), this will be my last month at WinCustomize so I wanted to get a few members promoted to Journeyman. These members deserve recognition for their time to create and upload skins and themes here, and for their contributions to the forums and community.

Let's say a big congrats to the following members:

Cyberslober

Dcrew57

Halo296

JoeyW8

JanOscar

We appreciate your contributions to the site!

Christmas is approaching fast, and I hope you are looking forward to a fun and festive holiday season! Animated wallpapers for DeskScapes is a fantastic way to add some holiday decoration to your desktop. Whether it's Christmas trees, Holiday lights, or a beautiful winter scene, we have a variety of wallpapers for you to check out.

Here are some of our favorite holiday animated wallpapers!

Here Comes Santa

Christmas Winter Window

Christmas Tree

Desktop Xmas Lights

Stardock Releases Fences 4 with Peek,
Support for Windows 10 and 11  
Get it Now

Stardock released Fences 4, an app that allows users to automatically organize shortcuts and icons on their PC desktops into custom-sized spaces called fences. Building upon previous versions of Fences that are used by millions of users of Microsoft Windows®, Fences 4 introduces new features that will streamline workflows while keeping desktops organized. 

New in Fences 4 is Peek, a feature that lets users instantly view their fences by pressing Windows key + space, making accessing content significantly faster. For example, while working in a program like Adobe’s Premiere or Photoshop, users can bring a folder portal filled with their source footage and images to the surface of their desktop by pressing the configurable hotkey. This eliminates the need to minimize the application and go searching for the required asset in File Explorer. 

Also new in Fences 4 is the Desktop Display feature. The Windows key + D hotkey can be configured to be either toggle or press-and-hold to streamline your workflow for accessing content on your desktop.  

"Fences 4 is designed to deliver a modern desktop experience," said Brad Sams, Vice President and General Manager of Stardock Software. "Fences is the best way to organize your desktop, and the new “Peek” feature makes it possible to access all of your Fences content at any time and within any application. Your workflow will never be the same.” 

Along with its new features, Fences 4 has been optimized so that it loads before the desktop when a PC is booted up, making it not only more functional, but also more performant.

Fences 4 is available for $9.99 or through Stardock's Object Desktop.
For more information, visit the Fences 4 website here. 

It's crazy to think that we're already at the end of 2021! At least we have the Christmas and Winter holidays to celebrate while we wait for the new year to approach. As always, a new month means we have a new desktop screenshot thread in the forums so our awesome community members can show off their desktops.

Let us know what skins and themes you are using, especially if you have a holiday themed desktop!

Post your desktops to the monthly thread here: https://forums.wincustomize.com/508626/

(This is a news thread and will be locked. Screenshot taken by don5318)

We hope everyone had a fun and festive Thanksgiving, and now that November is winding down it's time to focus on our Christmas desktops! Christmas is always a fun time for skinning as we have such a wide variety of themes to choose from here on WinCustomize. Some of my favorites for the season is animated wallpapers for DeskScapes. It's always relaxing to have a nice scene of animated Christmas trees on the desktop, and we have plenty of holiday scenes to choose from.

Here are a few of our favorites to get your holiday desktop started. Be sure to post in the comments what your favorite Christmas themes are so we can feature them throughout December.

Xmas Holiday by don5318 (WindowBlinds)

Christmas Tree (DeskScapes animated wallpaper)

Christmas Holidays V.2 (WindowBlinds)

Christmas Lights (Desktop Gadget)

Santa Claus (CursorFX)

Gingerbreads Playing in Snow (Wallpaper)

The Thanksgiving holiday is this week for many of us in the community. We wanted to take a moment and send out a big thank you to our community and to send a big Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who is celebrating this week with family and friends. We appreciate everyone in our various Stardock communities, and we hope you have a great holiday!

Do you have any plans for this week or the weekend? Are you cooking anything good? Let us know in the comments!

We're halfway through November and the galleries are getting a nice stream of uploads over the past couple of weeks. There's lots to look at but today I just wanted to take a moment and feature some of the fantastic desktop wallpapers in the gallery.

You can check out all the latest desktop wallpapers here, and in the DeskScapes app.

The Surfing Whale

Teleported to Metaverse

Space Station

Climbing Up the Walls Blu

Fences 4 Beta 1 Available Today with New Peek Feature
Fences Peek and Desktop Display will improve your workflow
Get into the Beta Now

Stardock has released the first beta of Fences 4, a program that allows users to automatically organize files, folders, and applications on their PC desktops into custom-sized spaces called fences. Fences 4, designed to work with Windows 10 and 11, introduces Peek, a new feature that will streamline your workflow while keeping your desktop organized. 

Fences Peek lets users instantly view their fences by pressing Windows key + space to make accessing your content much faster. For example, while working in a program like Adobe’s Premiere or Photoshop, users can bring up a folder portal filled with their source footage and images to the surface of their desktop by pressing the assigned hotkey. This eliminates the need to minimize the application and go searching for the required asset in File Explorer. 

With the enhanced Desktop Display feature, users can configure Windows key + D to be either toggle or press-and-hold. This refinement makes the hotkey easier to use and allows users more control over how they manage and access their desktop content. 

"Fences 4 is designed to meet the needs of today's PC user," said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. "Fences has always been a great way to organize your desktop, and the new ‘Fences Peek’ and ‘Desktop Display’ features we have coming in the beta are perfect not only for organizing, but also optimizing your workflow in most applications." 

Along with new features, Fences 4 has been optimized so that it loads before the desktop when a PC is booted up, making Fences 4 not only more functional but also more performant. 

Coming soon, Fences for Business introduces new features for business users to make it easier keep their fleet of PCs organized and desktops standardized.  

The Fences 4 beta is available for $9.99 or through Stardock's Object Desktop
For more information, visit the Fences 4 website here. 

Thanksgiving isn't the most popular skinning holiday, but I wanted to feature a few Thanksgiving themes and wallpapers for those who want a festive desktop this month. The good thing about Thanksgiving is that many of our autumn skins will work perfectly for the holiday, and we have a wide selection of those already.

Check out a few of our favorites!

Thankful

Scenic IV

Happy Thanksgiving Holiday Spread

Two Pumpkins on a Table