Desktop Minder is free, and it comes as one Setup program: download it, run it, and a minute later it's on your computer. It needs 64-bit Windows 11 and about half a gigabyte of room, and nothing installed first: Setup carries its own copy of .NET 10. A few things do work better with free helpers, listed below. It's a work in progress, and I use it every day.

Download

The Setup program isn't posted here yet. When it is, the link will be on this page, under the usual Unknown Publisher warning.

What Your Computer Needs

• 64-bit Windows 11. That's what I build it on and test it on, and Setup installs only the 64-bit program.
• Nothing to install first. The program is built on Microsoft's .NET 10, and Setup brings its own copy of it, kept inside Desktop Minder's folder. So it makes no difference whether .NET is on your computer, and any that is there is left alone. (That is why the download is bigger than you might expect.)
• WebView2. This is the browser engine that shows web pages, mail and anything else with real structure, and it's already part of Windows 11.
• About 500 MB of disk space for the program, on the drive Windows is on (the download is smaller, because Setup packs it). It fills the screen, so the bigger the screen, the more room your documents have.
• No administrator rights. Setup installs for the person running it only, so another account on the same computer is left alone.

The program draws itself at a fixed scale and lets Windows stretch it, so at a display scaling above 100% it will look a little soft. It works, but it's not as sharp.

Helpers That Make It Better

None of these is required, and Desktop Minder tells you, with a tip on the grayed command, when one is wanted:

• ffmpeg and ffprobe, free, for exact frames in a film and copying them out, converting films and recordings, measuring loudness, and making and publishing the video and audio editors' results. They're found if they're on your path, in Program Files\ffmpeg, or in C:\ffmpeg\bin.
• FluidSynth and a General MIDI SoundFont, free, to play MIDI scores with the right instruments. Without them Windows' own synthesizer stands in, with the wrong voices.
• Microsoft Word, to open the old .doc format. A .docx doesn't need it.
• PowerToys, for the Resize... command on pictures, which hands them to its Image Resizer.
• OneDrive, if you'd like your desktops, your icons and what you've watched to follow you from one computer to another. Without it they stay on this one.

What Setup Does

It puts the program in C:\Desktop Minder, or whatever drive Windows is on, which it asks no questions about, and adds Desktop Minder to the Start menu. You can also tick a box to have an icon on your desktop. Setup also brings Set Up Email, the small companion that makes mailboxes, which Desktop Minder opens for you from the Mail folder, and the small Updater that keeps the program up to date. When it's done, Setup offers to start the program. If a copy is already running, Setup asks to close it first. If it finds settings left by an earlier copy, it asks whether to clear them so the program starts as if it were new; the default is to keep them.

What it doesn't do matters as much. It doesn't touch Explorer, the taskbar or your Start menu's other entries, it doesn't start with Windows, and it doesn't make itself the Windows shell. Those are choices you can make, one at a time, on the program's own Settings sheet, and unmake there. Your own folders are never moved.

Updating and Removing It

Desktop Minder keeps itself up to date a piece at a time. When it starts, and once a day after that, it looks on this website for a newer copy, and fetches only the pieces that have changed, not the whole program again. Every piece is checked before it is used, and nothing in the program's folder changes until you say Restart now or next close the program; then the new pieces go in all at once, or none of them do. The only question it asks is whether to restart.

The Settings sheet says how quiet to be about it: Download updates quietly, and ask before restarting (the usual way, as above), Ask me before downloading an update, or Never look unless I click Check for Updates, and the Check for Updates button is there whichever you choose. When a change is too big to come in pieces, it offers this page's Setup instead. You can also just download the new Setup from this page and run it over the old one at any time.

To remove it, use Uninstall Desktop Minder at the foot of the Settings sheet, or Windows' Installed apps. It closes a running copy, takes back anything it set up to start with Windows (including the shell, if you had made Desktop Minder that), and asks whether to keep your settings. It never touches the folders your desktops are made of.

To see what the program does, begin with Desktop Minder and the Desktops and Panes page.

What's Changed

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 11/6/2026 Updated: 11/13/2026		Page Views: 46
Hashtags: #Software #DesktopMinder #Updates #Changes #History #WhatsNew
What each update of Desktop Minder changed, newest first. Desktop Minder opens this page on Home the first time it starts after being updated.
Estimated reading time: 16 minute(s) (3598 words)

What each update of Desktop Minder changed, newest first. The version is the day the program was built. The program opens this page, on Home, the first time it starts after it has been brought up to date; it is a part of the Download page, for anyone who would like to read back.