DesktopOK Saves Your Desktop Icon Positions
Windows only: Tiny application DesktopOK saves and restores your desktop icon positions—so your perfect icon layout won’t get lost if your resolution changes when hooking to another monitor or playing a game.
Using the application is easy enough—just use the save and restore buttons, which work exactly as you would expect them to—the nice feature about this application is that you can save multiple layouts, which could come in handy if you regularly switch between an external monitor and the laptop screen. The application doesn’t need to be running all the time—you can simply save your layout and then only open it again when you want to restore the layout.
If this utility just isn’t for you, you can check out previously mentioned Shock Desktop to save your icon layout, or take a look at Fences, a seriously awesome way to organise your desktop icons. If you want a solution that works from the Explorer context menu, check out an icon-layout-saving Explorer plug-in that I’ve previously written about.
DesktopOK is a free download for Windows only—it didn’t work under Windows 7 in our testing, but should function correctly in Windows XP—if you get it to work in Vista or Windows 7 let us know in the comments. Thanks, Shankar!
DesktopOK [SoftwareOK]
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Iconoid, any one?
It doesn't work very well. I moved from Windows to Linux and stored my old Windows user into a VirtualBox machine. Booting up VB messed up my icons because it wouldn't boot in full screen. Restoring the icons with this utility didn't work as expected. Too many icons were not properly place to their original location.
I finally deleted my Windows user and don't need this anymore, but it definitely should be polished.
so very useful it is such a pain to put them all back in order when something stupid, lowers the resolution of my high resolution 1920x1200 to 640x480 (a big giant wtf)
will this work with other things on the desktop? It really annoys me that everytime i change monitors or play a game all my rainmeter skins move too. (although strangely rainlendar behaves).
@kleinfelter: Just what I was thinking - people still use desktop icons? Quick launch and Google Desktop FTW!
@Amarus:
The only icons on my desktop are mounted drives and local partitions.
Plus two shortcuts to folders
One that's synched, and one folder named "temp".
Temp, is where I put all the trash that people normally stick on their desktops.
Of course you could also move those icons into the Start Menu, or a System Tray menu. That which does not exist (i.e. desktop icons) cannot be messed up.
kleinfelter
Sweeeeet. This happens to me all the time. Too bad I found out about this right after it got messed today.
James Liu
@iamkewl: Not me. My desktop is a big blank, black screen. No muss, no fuss.
lhed
I use IconLock on my XP machines:
[roverbot.tripod.com]
I only run it before and after I make changes though, which saves having it running all the time.
@dchall8: I just tried this 10 mins ago and it seems to work for me.
[tinyurl.com]
@krewemaynard: I uninstalled Fences because when I needed to turn it off it was a pain to open the settings and find the turn off option, it didn't seem to have a process I could find to kill.
Icon Restore is what I use: [www.snapfiles.com]
I believe it's the backbone of one of the possibilities described in one of the links posted in the original article.
However, this is a simple install, which does exactly the same thing (right click Recycle Bin to save/restore icon layout).
Clifton Tarpy
I was just looking for something like this last week, and if I recall I couldn't get this one working in Windows 7. Can anyone recommend a similar program to do this on Windows 7, 64-bit?
@ustice: Thank you for helping me finish off my work day properly.
jonny6pak
how about saving ipod/iphone icon layouts? That is about to become insanely useful soon with OS 3.0 coming in the next month or two.
syko21
If I used my desktop icons/could see my desktop most of the time. I usually have too much stuff open to bother going to the desktop to access something [and when I do I usually open a window to the desktop]. This would've been helpful for me tho back a few years.
3 monitors and I still can't see the desktop lol.
Mint137
@ab0rtretryfail: They cover up my beautiful wallpaper.
Plus it's an impenetrable barrier to any un-savvy user that might mess with it. ;)
v.dog
@ustice: First thing i thought of when i saw this :D
I wish someone was working on a way for Vista to remember the way I want my file folders to look.
X-Mouse Button Control comes with that as well, so if you are using it already, you got it :).
Bojan Baroš
If LH hadn't already got me hooked on Fences, I might have given this a try.
krewemaynard
@iamkewl: Haha yeah I'm addicted to Rocketdock and Stacks.
SJRNWT
@iamkewl: It's a bad habit I've been trying to kill. One day I will be icon free on the desktop.
jonny6pak
@ustice: There is no sort by penis!
@iamkewl: can not stand icons anymore :|
@ab0rtretryfail: why would you?
Sean Masters
This is so perfect! I connect and disconnect from an external monitor nearly daily, and it bugs me that my icon(s) move around each time because of the resolution (oddly enough, not a problem in OS X. Not to be one of THOSE guys, but it's true). Thanks for this one!
I still use them!
Thanks, whenever my computer crashes from running way too many in tabs in chrome and firefox simultaneously (yes I know how bad that is) my icons get all messed up so this is very handy.
KittyKittyKitty
In case you need to sort by penis.
(In case you were living under a rock and don't get that, [thewebsiteisdown.com])
@iamkewl: Why wouldn't you use desktop icons?
ab0rtretryfail
@iamkewl:
I'm too lazy to sort everything directly where it's supposed to go. I stack everything on the desktop hoping to sort it out during the weekend. Which I don't...
Amarus
I didn't realize people still used desktop icons. :)
iamkewl
I tried all the "Icons position savers" one after another as I was never completely satisfied by the result
I stopped to search 1 year ago when I found DeskSave: [www.desksave.de]
+ I like to mention Iconoid just to make disappear all the Desktop Icons after the time you have decided [www.sillysot.com]
frankell
@ab0rtretryfail: No need anymore. Docks make things easy or you can do what I did {disclaimer: Windows XP}. With a widescreen monitor, I dragged the quick launch bar to the left side of the screen and loaded up with my most used programs, using the Start menu to get to anything else. Then I invisibilized the icons and my desktop is now the cleanest thing in my house.
[www.flickr.com]
I've been using DesktopSaver for years for this. It's open source:
[sourceforge.net]
:-)
hackyourlife
@kschang: I use iconoid!
+1
contro
Looks good, had problems before with desktop icons rearranging themselves due to the Nvidia software when profile switching, but was easily fixed by unticking "load taskbar position". Now if it could save all my window sizes and positions too because it gets resized and thrown all over the place on my 1st display when I enable the 2nd display on TV.
aarste
if you have ultramon, it has this function. Particularly useful with dual/triple monitor setups because after an RDP session it will move the icons around.
unruled
I tried to uninstall DesktopOK from the Windows Add/Remove Programs listing. After uninstalling, a message came up saying that some parts could not be uninstalled and must be removed manually. Now, it is no longer listed in the Add/Remove programs listing but I *still* have the context menus on the desktop. When I right click I still see "Save Desktop Icon Layout" and "Restore Desktop Icon Layout", and the menus still seem to work. Is anyone else having this issue? Any suggestions on how I can get rid of this thing?
Thanks,
Carl