Down the left side of every desktop is a strip of tabs, and each tab opens a launcher: a pane of tiles for a folder—or for your drives, the Recycle Bin, a music library. The first three, Documents, Folders and Apps, are the desktop's own folder shown three ways, so the programs aren't mixed in with the documents. Beyond those there are more standard tabs you can switch on, and you can open a launcher on any folder you like, as many as you like; the ones you've pinned are there again next time. A launcher can show its folder as tiles, as a list, or as a Tree whose folders open right where they stand. Where a folder open in the View is a document you read, a launcher is a place you start from.

What a Launcher Is

A launcher is a wall of icons, called tiles, one for each thing in a folder. Click the vertical tab on the left edge and the pane slides out; click the same tab again and it slides back, giving the View its width. The tab's words read from the bottom up, and are bold while the pane is open. Rest the pointer on a tab and it shows the full path of the folder behind it.

Several launchers can be open at once, side by side: Ctrl+click a second tab to add it, or Shift+click to take a range. Drag the pane's inner edge to resize it (from 120 to 900 pixels; each desktop remembers its own width). Hold something you're dragging over a closed tab for a moment and it opens, so you can drop into it.

The Standard Tabs

Every desktop has the same fourteen standard tabs, in two groups: the top ones, in the order below, and a bottom group pinned to the foot of the strip.

The last five, from Apps down, are the bottom group. Documents, Folders and Apps are one folder with three filters, so the programs stay out of the way of the documents. If it guessed wrong about an item, right-click it and choose Shows As > App, Folder, Document or Auto; the choice is kept in the desktop's folder.

Showing and Hiding Tabs

Right-click the strip, or any standard tab, and the menu is headed Standard Tabs, with all fourteen listed and ticked where shown. Click one to show or hide it; Show Them All at the foot puts everything back, and once everything is showing it reads Close All but This PC. The same ticks are on the desktop's settings page, under Side tabs, in a list headed Left, on this desktop. (The list beside it, Right, on every desktop, is for the strip down the other side.) A tab you put away keeps its place, and comes back where it was.

Drag a tab up or down to put it where you like; each desktop remembers its own order. Each standard tab wears a pale color of its own, and the others are dealt theirs from a palette.

Opening a Launcher on Any Folder

You aren't limited to the standard tabs. Any folder can have a launcher of its own, and there is no limit on how many are open. Each is another tab, added at the end of the top group, named for its folder. There are several ways to open one:

• Open Launcher. Right-click a folder, in a listing or on a tile, and choose Open Launcher. In a launcher pane you can also select one folder and use its Document menu. A shortcut to a folder counts. This opens the pane and pins it.
• Double-click a folder of folders. In a launcher, double-click a folder that holds only folders and shortcuts, in any mix, and it opens as a launcher in its place, unpinned. That's how the Mail and Calendars folders open. A folder with any other file in it opens in the View instead, as a listing.
• Shift+double-click. In a folder open in the View, hold Shift and double-click a folder row: it opens in the View and goes on the strip as a launcher, unpinned. Shift+click on the Up arrow does the same for the folder above.
• A music library. Open Launcher on a scanned library's root opens its tab, and two more beside it: Artists and Albums, listed from the library, so they're quick.
• A video or a recording project. These open as a film or recording; Open Launcher on one shows what's inside as an ordinary folder.

If that folder already has a launcher, you don't get a second: its tab simply comes forward. Two folders of the same name look alike on the strip, which is what the pointer-over path is for.

Pinned and Not

A pinned launcher comes back every time Desktop Minder starts. Right-click a folder's tab and tick Pin to This Desktop to pin one, or to let it go. A launcher that isn't pinned is there for as long as it's showing: next time, it returns only if it was the one on show when you left, and not if it had been slid away. Each desktop keeps its own, in its own folder's settings, so a desktop in OneDrive has the same launchers on your other computer.

Closing One

A folder launcher's bar has an X, Close this pane, and a Close All. The tab's right-click menu has Close and Close All too, and under a heading, Folder Tabs, lists every open folder launcher by name, as Close and the name, with Close All Folder Tabs at the foot, so any one can be got rid of from any tab. These close only folder launchers, never the standard tabs, which you put away by unticking. Closing a launcher also unpins it, so it won't come back. If you delete a folder in Desktop Minder, its launcher closes and goes; if the folder simply vanishes—a USB stick pulled, a share down—the tab closes but the pin stays, and it returns when the folder does.

Using a Launcher

Tiles

A single click selects a tile; the Properties panel on the right-hand strip describes it. Double-click opens it in the View, or runs it, as appropriate; if the same file is already open on another desktop, that desktop comes forward instead. Ctrl+click and Shift+click add to the selection and take a range, and a rubber band dragged over empty space sweeps up a group. To rename a tile, click its name once it's the only one selected (clicking the icon only selects), or right-click and choose Rename; the name opens in place, Enter keeps it and Escape drops it. Right-click a tile for the same menu as anywhere else: Open, Run, Shows As, Uncompress, Compress, Cut, Copy, Paste, Copy as Path, Rename, Delete, Properties, Show in File Explorer, and whatever the kind of file adds—for a song or a film, a Tags item with Edit, Copy, Paste and Clear under it (described under Folder Documents); for a folder, Open Launcher and Create Desktop.

The Bar

Across the top of a pane: the folder's name, in bold, then these:

• Document offers New, Create Shortcuts, Paste, the menu for whatever is selected, Move to and Open Launcher. New offers a Folder on panes that show folders, and on panes that show documents the files that can start out empty: Audio, Text (Plain, Rich and Full), Video and Word Document; it is not offered on Apps, since a program isn't made by naming a file. (They're described under Folder Documents.) Create Shortcuts offers Web Site... and Program..., and on Apps Social Sites. A new file opens in the View, ready to write in, with its tile's name ready to type. Move to lists every desktop and moves the selection into that desktop's folder.
• View offers Large Icons, Medium Icons, List and List Top—a card as wide as the pane, its name on top and the first few lines of the file underneath, or a small picture for a picture; it's what the Notes pane uses—and Tree (next section), then Show Hidden and Extensions, which is Use Default (from Settings), Always Show or Never Show, and Refresh.
• Sort offers Name, Type, Date Modified and Size (the last two start with the newest or biggest), Ascending and Descending, and Folders First.
• The trash can, which is gray until something deletable is selected; the Delete key does the same. It asks nothing where there's a Recycle Bin, and asks first where there isn't.

Each launcher remembers its own view, sort, direction and hidden and extension choices, and in a Tree which folders are open, even after it's closed and opened again. Refresh, or F5, is on the View menu, though a pane keeps itself up to date.

The Tree View

Choose View > Tree and the pane becomes a single column of lines, the way Explorer's navigation pane is, and a folder opens where it stands. Each folder has a small chevron at its left. Click it, or select the folder and press the Right arrow, and what is inside comes in underneath, one step further in; click it again, or press the Left arrow, and it shuts. Folders inside folders open the same way, down as far as sixteen levels. The chevron only opens and shuts; it doesn't select the line, and clicking the line doesn't open the folder. Everything else works as in any launcher: double-click opens a file in the View, the menus are the same, and things can be dragged onto any folder in the tree.

The tree is for getting around without leaving the pane, which makes it a good launcher for a folder you go into often: pin your Bookmarks folder, say, switch it to Tree, and the whole folder is one click away on the strip. The pane keeps itself up to date inside the open folders as well as at its top, so a file made in one of them appears. Which folders are open is remembered with the pane's view, and a folder you shut remembers which of its own folders were open. On a Documents pane, which shows no folders, there is nothing to open; the Tree is for Folders and for launchers on a folder. This PC, the Recycle Bin and a music library's Artists and Albums don't offer it.

Width and Columns

When a pane is showing icons, there's no point in a strip that leaves half a tile of empty space beside the last one. So when you open a pane that's in an icon view, or switch a pane to Large Icons or Medium Icons, the strip adjusts to the nearest width that holds a whole number of columns of tiles. Lists and the Tree have no columns, so the strip is left alone. And if you drag the pane's edge yourself, it stays where you put it; the fitting happens only when a pane opens or its view changes.

Dragging Between Panes

Drop on a folder tile, which lights up, and the things go into that folder: a plain drag moves, Ctrl copies, Ctrl+Shift makes a shortcut. Between panes of the same folder, though, Documents, Folders and Apps, nothing moves. The folder is the same; what changes is which pane you want the thing in, and the folder just remembers. It's kept in the desktop's settings, and the item appears in the new pane. Drop on the Recycle Bin and the originals are recycled. The full table of keys is under Folder Documents.

This PC and the Recycle Bin

This PC lists drives, network drives and devices. In the icon views, each disk, stick and share has a thin bar under its icon showing how full it is: blue, and red once less than a tenth is free. Rest the pointer on a drive for the words, such as 98.4 GB free of 465 GB; the bars are read again every twenty seconds or so while the pane is showing. Rename a drive to set its label, and double-click Desktop Minder Settings to open the program's settings in the View. Neither it nor Windows Settings takes drops. The Recycle Bin has a Bin menu in place of the others, with Restore, Restore All and Vaporize All, which asks before it deletes anything for good; its trash can deletes the selection for good, asking first.

The Keyboard

Click a tile first, so the pane has the keyboard. Then Delete deletes the selection (the same as the trash can, and left alone while a name is being typed), F5 reads the folder again, and in a Tree the Right and Left arrows open and shut the folder that is selected. While you're renaming, Enter keeps the name and Escape drops it. That's all; the rest is the mouse and the menus.

Not Yet

• Going up or back inside a launcher. A launcher stays on its one folder; to go deeper, switch it to the Tree, open another launcher on the folder, or open the folder in the View.
• Keyboard control of tiles beyond the keys above: arrow keys to move about, Enter to open, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. For now, use the mouse and the menus. (Ctrl+V does work in a folder open in the View.)
• Small Icons, which an older version had.
• Explorer's own menu, with the entries other programs add to it.