The Distraction-Free Desktop

The Distraction-Free Desktop

It may look like just a wallpaper, but reader DeviousDog put some work into making sure that it had just the right tools at hand and that all of the tempting distractions of his computer were far away while he was trying to work or study. Here’s how you can do the same thing.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • The Summer Sunset desktop by mariLou at SimpleDesktops;
  • The Rainmeter system tweaking and monitoring tool for Windows;
  • The Enigma skin for Rainmeter (with a few changes, like setting the font to Segoe UI);
  • The Muxos music player for Rainmeter with some additional custom tweaks;
  • The 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to customise the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, namely turning off “always on top” so Launchy and Rainmeter could be at the bottom of the screen and still be useful, and a few other tweaks DeviousDog notes at the link below;
  • StarDock Windowblinds and its “Modern” skin (included with Windowblinds) to make the traskbar transparent;
  • Launchy, our favourite app launcher for Windows, makes an appearance as an app launcher that also does much more.

These components go together to create a remarkably open and minimal desktop and taskbar that’s highly functional when you need it, and out of the way and transparent when you don’t need anything. For more on each piece of this, and for tips on how to configure everything just right, hit the link below to DeviousDog’s Kinja blog.

The Distraction Reducing Studious Desktop [DeviousDog]


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