8 Best Free Desktop Customizer Software For Windows

Here is a list of Best Free Desktop Customizer Software For Windows. Sometimes, it gets bothersome to see unnecessary and unorganized stuff filling up your desktop. So, to easily organize and customize your desktop, here is a list of desktop customization software to follow. These software are pretty easy to setup and can be accessed from your system tray for quick launch.

Using these freeware, you can easily add desired applications, folders, files, and other desktop items to personalize your desktop. You can group different programs and folders in different categories on your desktop. This sorts out the problem of an unarranged desktop. Few of these desktop personalization software provide application docks on desktop to add files, paths, folders, software, etc. You can quickly access any of these items from the application dock. The appearance and layout of the docks can be customized too. One of these desktop customize software converts the view of your Windows desktop to iPad one. You can add system items, files, folders, web URL, etc. to your personalized desktop. There is also a software which basically arranges your desktop icon in a particular shape, such as clock, triangle, rhombus, heart, star, etc. You can also change icon image of a particular desktop item in most of these software.

Along with all above features, these desktop organizer software let you setup general as well as advanced preferences, like interface language, icon settings, style, layout, theme, wallpaper, etc. Overall, all these software are helpful in making your desktop look organized with desired desktop items.

My favorite Desktop Customizer for Windows:

From this list, I have quite a few favorite desktop personalization software. I would keep RocketDock at the top as it provides a variety of desktop customization features. For example, you can add any type of item to the desktop, change icon image for a particular item, etc. PaperPlane is another favorite because it changes the look and feel of your Windows desktop to that of an iPad. Rainmeter is also a considerably good software.

You may also like some best free Mouse Buttons Customizer, Context Menu Editor, and Remote Desktop Manager software for Windows.

RocketDock

RocketDock is a pretty nice desktop customizer software for Windows. When you launch this software, it adds an application dock to your desktop. By default, the application dock contains folders which are regularly accessed by most users like Music, Document, Network, Pictures, Recycle Bin, etc. You can personalize this dock by adding multiple files, paths, and blank icons to it. Also, you can delete an already existing icon from the dock. In addition, you can categorize different sets of the applications with a separator.

Desktop Personalization Options in RocketDock:

• It lets you customize icons for the files, folders, and programs present on the application dock. Just click on a particular item on the dock and go to Icon Settings. From here, you will see some icons using which you can change icon for the chosen item. You can get more icons from internet by clicking on Get More button. The preview of icon is viewed in the same window, plus you can add properties like its name, target, arguments, start in, etc.
• You can change dock position on desktop to top, bottom, left, or right of the screen.
• Its dock settings menu lets you set up different preferences for the dock, like icon settings (quality, opacity, size, zoom, zoom width, zoom duration, hover effect), style (dock theme, opacity, font, outline opacity, shadow opacity, etc.), behavior (icon attention effect, auto hide, popup on mouseover), etc.
• Lock item is another useful feature of these software which lets you lock an item present on the dock.

In my opinion, RocketDock is one of the best desktop customizer software. You can set up its general preferences including language, run at startup, store settings in a portable INI, minimize windows to the dock, running application indicators, etc.

PaperPlane

PaperPlane is another desktop personalization software for Windows. It basically makes your Windows desktop similar to that of an iPad. As you launch the software, you will see the changed look of your desktop (click on above screenshot). All your desktop icons plus an accessories folder with a search bar will be visible on the new desktop. The accessories folder contains few popular applications like Paint, XPS Viewer, Notepad, Internet Explorer, etc.

Some important features of PaperPlane:

• It lets you add desired items to the PaperPlane desktop including system items (logout, restart, shutdown, computer, music, RasLink, network, recycle bin, desktop, etc.), files, folders, web URL, and new page.
• You can add PaperPlane in window mode on your original desktop.
• It lets you customize the background of the new desktop by adding a JPEG or BMP image.
• To view icons on the new desktop, you can change their size, blur background, etc.
• Using Settings menu, you can customize general preference (interface language, auto run at start, enable desk mode, enable full screen, etc.), layout (icon size, margin, etc.), activation (customize hotkeys for related events), appearance (shortcut caption, background, etc.), and other settings (add desktop right-click menu items, multiscreen select, etc.).

PaperPlane is another nice desktop customizer tool using which, you can change the look and feel of your Windows desktop.

Circle Dock

Circle Dock is another free desktop customizer software. As the name suggests, it launches a circular dock which can be customized by adding different applications, files, folders, etc. It comes in a portable version, so you don’t need to install it. Just run its executable file and it will add to your system tray. You can exit the application from there anytime.

You can add an item by adding its name, target folder or file, icon image (PNG), arguments, and run settings (normal, minimized, maximized). It provides a set of predefined icons which you can use to change item image. You can enable Icon Replacement Mode to open its icons library and replace icons of existing items quickly. It also lets you change icon image of the circular dock. Also, you can pause mouse toggling.

Its Settings option contains all dock configurations. From here, you can customize general preferences (enable dock rotation, use memory saver, customize mouse wheel scrolls per rotation, current rotation value, z-level, and click sensitivity), dock shape (number of icons per circle, minimum radius, separation between circles, format), background image, center button, item labels (font, opacity, size, etc.), animation (frame rate, rotation animation duration, fade in/out duration, etc.), dock location, language, etc.

Overall, Circle Dock is another nice and portable desktop customizer software for Windows.

Rainmeter

Rainmeter is a free and open source desktop customizer for Windows. It basically provides few skins to personalize your desktop.

Customize Desktop with Rainmeter:

As you launch this software, it adds to your system tray from where you can use it to customize desktop. On right-clicking its icon from system tray, you will see various options including Manage, Skins, Layout, etc. “Skins” is the option where you will find different skins to add floating widgets to your desktop to quickly access related functionalities. To get started with, it provides few basic skins including Clock, Disk (space used), Google, Network (IP address, upload, download), Recycle Bin (total items), and System (CPU, RAM, and SWAP usage). These skins can be modified too if you have good technical skills. In addition, you can create or download skin files (.INI) and add them to its illustro folder by going to Skin > Open Folder option. All skins need to have main building blocks which are measures and meters.

It provides a Manage feature for further customization of skins. Let’s talk about options provided in this feature:

1. Skin: Using this option, you can manually personalize a particular floating widget by setting its positions, load order, transparency of the widget, on hover event, and make it draggable, click through, keep on screen, snap to edges, and/or add it to favorites. From here, you can modify INI files too.
2. Layout: Save the current layout of the Rainmeter setup with a name.
3. Settings: Here, you can customize interface language (English, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Romanian, etc.), enable debug mode, change text editor, and do more.

From Manage window, you can also view its log file with all instances, time, source, and message.

Rainmeter is an overall great desktop organizer software for Windows users.

Desktop Icon Toy

Desktop Icon Toy is basically a desktop icon enhancement software for Windows. Its basic free version also comes with a 14-day trial of its full (paid) version. After 14 days, you can use it, but with feature restrictions.

Using this software, you can personalize your desktop by configuring desktop icons in a particular shape like clock, triangle, rhombus, heart, star, etc. You can customize the order of icons too. Apart from this, you can change icon text and background color, enable mouse gestures, set up icon and text hiding preferences, change the interface language, etc.

Some general preferences that you can set up include setting hotkeys for events, tray menu, toggle action, confirmation dialog, lock tray icon with a password, save the current layout as active layout, and more.

Desktop Icon Toy is a decent desktop customizer with limited customization tools. As there is no clear distinction between functionality of its free and 14-day trial version, I will not be able to tell what are the feature restrictions in the free version.

FSL Launcher

FSL Launcher is a simple and free desktop customizer software for Windows. If your desktop is filled up with too many of applications and folders, it can be bothersome to switch from one application to another. So, in that case, this desktop customizer software is really helpful. It basically lets you sort favorite applications and group them into different categories. This makes your desktop look clean and hassle-free.

It provides a panel with some default categories like Applications, Games, Internet, etc. You can delete these categories and add new ones as per your choice. To add applications, shortcuts, or folders, simply drag and drop them to a particular group. From its setup menu, you can customize basic (language, skin, show delay, hide delay, etc.), advanced (button mode, single click launch, show in system tray or taskbar, etc.), alerts, etc. settings. You can also explore group folders and their items in Windows file explorer.

Stick

Stick is the next software in this list of desktop organizer and customizer software. It lets you add different utility tabs to your desktop and personalize their appearance. These tabs include Calendar, Calculator, News Feed, Taskbar, Navigator, and Notes. For News Feed, you need to add a news feed URL to keep you updated with current news. To customize tab properties, here are the options you get:

• You can customize theme of individual tabs.
• You can enable or disable options like visible, autohide, autoshow, close button collapses, etc. for your tabs.
• It lets you set tab refreshing time.
• It lets you adjust transparency and slider speed.

Stick is another desktop customizer which lets you add regular utilities to your desktop.

SideSlide

SideSlide is another free desktop organizer. It basically provides a space to organize your desktop applications and folders. You can add different containers of folders, slideshow, RSS news feed, note, reminder, web URL, system commands, file or folder shortcut, etc. Later, it lets you arrange container position, verify shortcuts, lock editing, delete reminders, etc. It provides options to paste copied text, edit tags, add container library, etc.

To customize appearance, it lets you edit theme, wallpaper, foreground, background, etc. colors, font, etc. From its settings option, you set up general preferences like hotkeys, transparency, special effects, and more dock, container, keyboard navigation, and shortcut settings. You can also select desired search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, etc.

SideSlide is another decent desktop personalization software to organize your desktop.