Desktop Minder has two settings sheets. One belongs to a desktop and says what that desktop is called, where its folder is, what is behind it and which tabs show. The other belongs to the program and says what every desktop does unless a place says otherwise: whether file names show their extensions, which plug-ins are on, the colors, what Compress and Uncompress do with the original, whether Normalize > Loudness changes the audio files themselves, how files are numbered, whether to look for a newer version, and how the program sits with Windows. Neither has an OK button. Everything you change is changed as you change it. This page goes through every setting, what it starts as, and where it is kept.

Opening the Settings

Both sheets open in the View, like any other document, and both are on the menu you get by right-clicking a desktop's tab:

• Desktop Settings... opens the sheet for that desktop. Ctrl+, (Ctrl and the comma key, as in most programs that have preferences) opens the same sheet for the desktop you are on.
• Desktop Minder Settings... opens the program's own sheet. It is also a tile called Desktop Minder Settings in This PC, and opening the file Desktop Minder.dmini in your Apps\Cilwa folder shows the same sheet.

There is never anything to save. A tick, a color or a typed name is kept the moment you make it. If a setting can't be written down (a read-only folder, say), the sheet reads it back and shows what is really in force, so it never claims a change that didn't happen.

A Desktop's Settings

This is the sheet for one desktop. It is about the tab you right-clicked, not the one you happen to be on, so you can open Desktop Settings... for any tab. Its title in the View is the desktop's name with (Desktop Settings) after it. The Desktops page says what a desktop is; this is what you can change about one.

Name and Location

Name is what is on the tab. Type a new one and press Enter, or click away; the tab changes as you do. A name another desktop already has is refused, with the reason shown in red at the foot of the sheet. Home keeps its name, so for Home this box is grayed. (Right-clicking the tab and choosing Rename, or clicking the tab of the desktop you are already on, does the same thing.)

Location is the desktop's folder. Type a path and press Enter, or press Change... and pick a folder (Make New Folder is offered there). The folder is made if it isn't there. Nothing is moved: what was in the old folder stays in the old folder, and the desktop simply shows the new one. After a change the sheet opens again for the new folder.

Background

The wallpaper behind the desktop. The picker is the same one the + page uses, and offers:

• Image: one of the pictures that come with the program, chosen from the list, with a small preview;
• Browse...: a picture file of your own. A copy is kept in the desktop's folder, so the original can go wherever it likes afterwards. A file that can't be read as a picture is refused with a message;
• (none): no wallpaper, so the desktop shows plain Windows color;
• Color: a plain color, from a row of ten that are most often wanted or More..., which opens Windows' own color chooser.

It is on the desktop the instant you choose it. Choosing Image after a color brings back the last picture.

Side Tabs

Two lists with a tick beside each tab that is showing. Left, on this desktop is the strip of launcher tabs down the left of this desktop only. Right, on every desktop is the strip of panels down the right, which every desktop shares, which is why the list says so. Tick a tab and it is on the strip; untick it and it is gone, before you let go of the mouse. The same lists are on the strip's right-click menu as Standard Tabs and Side Tabs. What each tab is, is on the Launchers page.

Deleting a Desktop

Delete This Desktop... does what the tab's Delete Desktop does: it asks first, then takes the desktop off your tabs and off the + page's list, closes what it launched, and forgets its layout. The folder and everything in it are left alone. Home can't be deleted, and neither can the last desktop that is left; the button is grayed, and resting the pointer on it says why. If you want a desktop put away without forgetting it, use Close Desktop on the tab menu instead.

Desktop Minder Settings

The program's sheet is one page, in this order from the top. Each group is its own heading here.

The page is folded into sections, one under another, and each section opens and shuts when you click its heading, so you see only the part you came for. The sections are Folders, Plug-ins, Theme, Colors, Compressed files, Films, Audio, Numbering files, Updates, Downloads, Helpers, Passwords, Search and Windows. The first time, only Folders is open. Desktop Minder remembers which ones you leave open, and they are open again next time. This is kept with the program's other choices (see below), so it follows you to another computer, and nothing is written until you fold something away from how the page began. A section that is low on the page and opens below the bottom edge is scrolled into view.

Folders

One box: Show extensions. It is what a folder does when it hasn't chosen for itself, and it starts on, because that is how every listing looked before there was a choice. A single folder can choose differently on its own View menu (Extensions) and keeps its choice; a folder whose choice happens to match this one writes nothing down. An extension that neither Desktop Minder nor Windows recognizes is always shown, since it is the only thing saying what the file is. The Folders page has the rest of what a folder remembers.

Plug-Ins

A list of the plug-ins found, each with a tick. A plug-in is a folder holding a DLL of the same name, put in a Plugins folder beside Desktop Minder or in Plugins under your Apps\Cilwa folder. Notes and Wikipedia are the two that come with the program. Every plug-in starts off: code nobody asked for doesn't run. Ticking one takes effect the next time Desktop Minder starts. The exception is a plug-in that is an icon library (marked theme in the list), which has no code to start and applies at once. One that couldn't load shows why beside its name and can't be ticked. The Notes page describes the first.

Theme

A drop-down of the themes there are. The one that comes with the program is called Gingerbread, and it is what you have until you choose another. Any other theme is an icon library you have made a plug-in and switched on (above): it brings its own icons, for mail among other things, and its own starting colors. Choosing one applies at once.

A theme is a starting point, not a leash. Its colors are written into the same settings the next section edits, so if you then change a color it stays changed, and Default on a color puts back what Windows would use, not what the theme said. What a theme keeps hold of is its icons, which are drawn from the library for as long as it is the chosen one. If you switch off the plug-in behind the chosen theme, you are put back on Gingerbread. (Not to be confused with the Themes a web page can wear, which are style sheets; those are on the Text page.)

Colors

Six colors, each a row: a swatch, what it is for, and a Default button that is grayed until you have changed it. Click a swatch to choose another with Windows' color chooser.

The Accent Color Rule

The frame and the tabs follow Windows until you say otherwise. Desktop Minder reads the color Windows paints a title bar with: your accent color if Show accent color on title bars and window borders is on in Windows' own personalization settings, otherwise the plain light or dark of your Windows theme. Then it thins that out to half strength toward white, because the title bar's own color was too bold across a whole strip. If you change your accent in Windows, the strips change with it, a moment later, while the program is running. So if the frame looks wrong, look at Windows' accent first. Once you choose a color the frame stops following Windows and wears what you chose; Default sends it back to following. How pale the strips are isn't a setting yet.

Compressed Files

One box: Uncompress and Compress replace the original, which starts on. Once everything has come out whole, Uncompress puts the .zip, .7z, .rar or other compressed file in the Recycle Bin and keeps the folder it made; Compress does the same with a folder once its .zip is made and checked. So one thing is left where there was one thing. Nothing is replaced if anything went wrong, or where there is no Recycle Bin (a network or removable drive). Hold Ctrl as you choose either command to keep the original this once; untick the box to keep it always. More on the Folders page.

Audio

One group, Normalization, with four boxes and a slider that say what Normalize > Loudness does to a track. Until now it only wrote ReplayGain tags (how far down or up a player should bring each track) and never changed the file. Now it can change the file too.

• Normalize lossless waveforms (includes FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF and WavPack) starts off. It writes the file again at the right level: the same recording, sample for sample, only louder or quieter, in the same format and bit depth, with all its tags and its cover kept.
• Limit the peaks, so a boost is not cut short to keep them from clipping starts off. A quiet track whose loudest moment is already near full scale (the very top of what a recording can hold) can't ordinarily be raised to the level without that moment clipping, so the boost stops where the loudest peak reaches full scale and the tags ask a player for the rest. With this ticked, a lossless file is raised all the way to the level and a look-ahead peak limiter, as in the classic audio editors, holds the peaks just under full scale. The program then listens to the finished file again, and the tags say what is really left. It does change the shape of the loudest moments, which the plain boost does not, so it is off unless you choose it. It helps most with a track that has a few loud peaks on top of a quieter body; a track that is loud because it is made of peaks gains little. MP3 and Opus can't be limited without decoding them, so for those the boost always stops short of clipping.
• Adjust compressed audio gain frames (MP3 and Opus) starts off. An MP3 is not decoded or made again: the global gain written in each frame is changed, as the old MP3Gain program did, in steps of 1.5 dB (a limit of the MP3 format), so nothing is lost. An Opus file has its output gain changed in its header, which can be set much more finely.
• REPLAYGAIN tags starts on. It writes the ReplayGain tags. For a file that was changed by one of the first two, the tags say only what is left to do: nothing (0.00 dB) for a lossless or Opus file, and never more than 0.75 dB for an MP3, because of the 1.5 dB steps. For a file that was not changed, the tags say the whole of it, as before.

The Normalize to: slider sets what "normal" means: the loudness every track is brought to, from -26 to -10 LUFS in whole steps, with the value shown beside it (for example -18 LUFS (standard)). LUFS is a measure of how loud something sounds to a listener; the lower the number, the quieter. It starts at -18, which is ReplayGain's standard; -23 is the broadcast standard (EBU R128), and -14 is about what streaming services play at. An Opus file is always kept 5 dB under whatever you choose, because EBU's own level sits 5 dB under ReplayGain's, so an Opus file's tag still comes out at nothing left to do. The tags record the level that was used.

Only one of the lossless and compressed boxes applies to a given file. Ogg Vorbis and AAC in M4A files can only be given tags, since their sound can't be changed this way without making it again, and any file whose choice is off is given tags only. If the lossless, compressed and tags boxes are all unticked, Normalize > Loudness is not on any menu. The original file is replaced and nothing is kept to undo it, so changing the files is for people who want the files themselves at the right level, so that every player and device plays them evenly, and not only the players that read ReplayGain tags. Unless the limiter box is ticked (and for MP3 and Opus, always), a boost is never allowed to push the loudest moment past full scale; if it would, the tags carry the rest. More on the Audio page.

Numbering Files

The Style drop-down says how Normalize, Filename numbers a selection in a folder that has no numbering of its own to follow. There are six: 1., 01., 1), 01), A) and [01]. It starts at [01]. A folder whose first item is already numbered keeps that style; this is the style for any other. Numbers are padded with zeros so the names sort in order. The Folders page shows it at work.

Updates

Check for Updates looks, right now, at a small file on Paul's website that says which Setup is newest. The program's version is the day it was built, so the comparison is a date. A status line says how it is going and the pointer shows the wait cursor. If the website's version is no newer, you are told so (and which version you have). If it is newer you are asked, and nothing is downloaded unless you say Yes. The Setup is checked once it arrives, and you are asked again before Desktop Minder is closed to run it.

The box Look for a new version when Desktop Minder starts does the same look by itself, about twenty seconds after the program starts, so it stays out of the way of start-up. It starts off: nothing goes out over the network that nobody asked for. Looking only reads the file; it asks the same two questions. The newest Setup is also on the Download page.

Downloads

What belongs to downloading with BitTorrent: how fast to receive and send (nothing limits either until you set a limit), the port, how long a finished download is shared (until I have sent 1.0 times what I downloaded, to begin with), whether sharing and unfinished downloads carry on after a restart (both off), the protocol's three switches (on), how many files a new download fetches at once (3), and Download only through, the network connection, such as your VPN's, that downloads are allowed to use. It starts as Any connection. The Torrents page goes through each.

Search

Search with lists the search engines the Search slide-out can use, each with its name and web address. Click one and the slide-out uses it at once. It starts as Brave Search. Each engine is an .url file in a Search Engines folder in your home folder, so the four buttons under the list are New... (a name and an address with {searchTerms} where the words go), Delete (to the Recycle Bin, after asking), Open Folder, and Restore Starters, which puts back any of the engines Desktop Minder came with that you have deleted.

Windows

Two boxes and a button, last on the sheet.

• Start with Windows runs Desktop Minder when you sign in.
• Make Desktop Minder the Windows shell takes the place of Explorer's desktop and taskbar the next time you sign in. It is grayed until the first box is ticked, and unticking the first unticks it. It is set for you alone; another account on the same computer still gets Explorer. Untick it to have Explorer back at the next sign-in. If Desktop Minder will not start, Ctrl+Shift+Esc, Run new task, explorer.exe opens Explorer.
• Uninstall Desktop Minder..., at the far bottom right, apart from the settings because it isn't one. It starts the uninstaller and closes the program, which can't remove itself while it runs. The uninstaller asks whether to go on and whether to keep your settings. The button is grayed, with a tip saying why, on a copy that wasn't put there by Setup.

Where Everything Is Kept

Paul's rule is that a choice made on one computer is wanted on the other, so anything that can live in a file in your OneDrive does, and the registry is used only for what has to be known before any folder can be found. Every settings file has the extension .dmini (OneDrive stopped backing up .ini files). The program registers that extension for you alone when it starts, so double-clicking a .dmini in Explorer opens Desktop Minder.

In the Folder

A desktop is a folder, so its settings travel with it: copy the folder to another computer, or let OneDrive do it, and the desktop looks the same there. The same goes for any folder. If it has no Desktop.dmini, it has never been customized. Windows' own desktop.ini is read, to borrow a sensible default, but never written. Don't tidy a Desktop.dmini away: it is the folder's columns, sort order and Show Hidden choice, which is why the program asks before it offers to delete one.

In Apps\Cilwa

The program's own sheet is kept here, in OneDrive when you have one, beside the icon library. On a computer with no OneDrive it falls back to the same ordinary per-computer place the icon library does, where nothing was going to travel anyway. A color you changed on one computer is therefore the color on the other, and the theme and the plug-ins you switched on are too (the plug-in files are wherever you put them).

In the Registry

The registry holds the roster of desktops because it has to be readable before any desktop's folder is known; the right strip's open panels and widths are kept there so they carry from one desktop to the next; and the ad blocking switch lives there too. Settings kept in the registry stop dead at the edge of that computer, which is why there are so few of them.