Every week, we feature desktops and home screens submitted by readers that we find elegant, informative, attractive, and in most cases, a great use of the customisation tools and UI tweaks available for both desktop and mobile operating systems. This was a great year for desktops and home screens, with more submissions than we could ever possibly highlight. Here are the most popular featured desktops and home screens of 2011.
The Hexagonal Desktop
Claudia is a Fringe fan, but she’s also a fan of being able to see a ton of important information at a single glance on her desktop. She combined her two loves into this fun and informative HUD for her Windows 7 desktop using Rainmeter. More »
The Clean, Hyperinformative Desktop
Michael Baberick custom-made this look for his system running Windows 7, and it’s a perfect example of using the right tools to add huge amounts of information to a desktop, along with quick access to important folders, while still keeping plenty of room available as a workspace. More »
The Sands Of Time Desktop
This minimal but pretty amazing desktop belongs to reader Ian Michael Smith, who made good use of GeekTool and placed a functioning clock behind a mountain of sand. More »
The Blue Bokeh Windows 8 Desktop
We’ve seen Windows Phone 7 desktops before, which is stylistically similar to what Microsoft has us expecting in Windows 8, but when it’s done this well it’s worth repeating. More »
The Command Line Desktop
We love the command line, but this desktop takes that love to entirely new levels with detailed, integrated statistics and information all arranged to make one densely packed but beautiful package. More »
Easy A Desktop
Although this week’s featured desktop doesn’t come with many bells and whistles, inaudiblewhisper did something really neat: created a desktop with a dynamic piece of paper where the handwritten note changes based on statistics and other activity. More »
Purple Cloud Desktop
Earlier this week we shared a bunch of great duotone wallpapers and today’s featured desktop demonstrates how effectively such simple wallpapers can be. More »
The Wall Mirrored Desktop
Alex George chose a somewhat photo-realistic route when he made the Wall Mirrored desktop for his Windows system, and the results are not only informative, but extremely slick. More »
Mini Sky Bar Desktop
The minimalism exhibited in this featured desktop makes it seem like there’s really nothing going on, but its practical functionality and good looks actually require a reasonable amount of customisation. More »
The All-In Desktop
Christopher Yarrow has a desktop that reminds us of Windows Phone 7 and long nights at the blackjack tables in Vegas. With RSS on the desktop and widgets for Gmail, the weather, networking, and power, he’ll always know where he stands when the chips are down. More »
The Minimalist, Informative Lock Screen
This minimalist, text-based lock screen gives you all the info you need to know when you hit your iPhone’s home button: the time, the date, and even the amount of RAM your device has free. More »
The Pre-Ice Cream Sandwich Home Screen
Ice Cream Sandwich may not be out for a while, but reader EShow has already themed his phone in the Ice Cream Sandwich style, and then some. Here’s how he put it together. More »
The ‘Don’t Panic’ Home Screen
Today, reader Crashedjava shows us how he took simplicity and ease of use to the max when he turns his Android home screen into a plain-text, multicolored Windows Phone clone. More »
The Minimalist, Text-Only Home Screen
Reader Rob Higareda shares his home screen with us today, featuring a sparse, almost icon-free interface with just a little bit of text.
The Information Galaxy Home Screen
Reader Minhtam.nguyen created this lock screen that gives him the date, his calendar, and the weather all without ever needing to unlock his phone.
The Andro-Metro Home Screen
Reader MortemTuam takes a feature-filled Android ROM and makes it quick and simple with a beautiful Windows Phone 7-based theme for Android. The goal of this home screen, besides Windows Phone-level simplicity, is just plain beautiful images, colours, and fonts. More »
The Full Control Home Screen
It can be annoying to unlock your phone every time you just want to hit a simple button, so reader WhizWeb created this simple, yet very functional lock screen that enables access to all sorts of settings. More »
The ThunderMIUI Home Screen
Today, I’m actually featuring my own home screen, inspired by the new MIUI ROM for the HTC Thunderbolt and all the home screens you guys have posted over the months-including a bunch of great text-based widgets. More »
The Nearly Textless Home Screen
We’ve seen so many text-only home screens lately, but reader crstemple took his home screen in the complete opposite direction-removing text from nearly the entire homescreen for a very unique look.
More »
The Chicago Skyline Home Screen
Reader Worlder Mon created this slick, entirely black-and-white home screen using a few widgets and a stunning image of the Chicago skyline.
There you have it – all of the most popular home screens and featured desktops of 2011.
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