cool things to do with your desktop?

[homozygotte]

heya!

ive got a pretty standard desktop. background is my favorite musician, games, applications, etc. but nothing too special. i know shimejis and such are out there, but id like to hear some more inputs

what are some cool or niche little additions you guys may have on your desktops that youd recommend for others?

THANKS

[alexela64]

Idk if you've heard of Rainmeter but I loved adding widgets to my desktop in highschool. You can add stuff like "now playing", a tracker for your cpu usage, or even just a big ol picture of Miku. Some "skins" get really complicated but most of the time I just used it for stuff like I mentioned previously.
Iirc it's documented pretty well but my dms are always open if you want help setting it up/finding cool addons.

There's also something I do now, which is use a wallpaper that has sections for me to put my various folders and files in. It's just cosmetic, but it's pretty cute.
I'll edit this if i can think of anything else but for now these are the two I have the most experience with.

[homozygotte]

havent heard of it until now!!! ill look through some addons once i get the chance from the looks there seems like a WHOLE lotta different options which is really nice to know

any skin recs? mayayybe preferably windows 3.1/95/XP -esque ones? OR any you overall think are cool would be nice to know about

thank yew!!!!

[lakes]

any skin recs? mayayybe preferably windows 3.1/95/XP -esque ones? OR any you overall think are cool would be nice to know about

this is not rainmeter related
but if you use windows & want the taskbar & start menu to look like anywhere from win95 to win7, open shell & retrobar are worth looking into

[alexela64]

any skin recs?

Unforch i don't know of many skins that fit that specific criteria, as I used to look for specific ones that matched the theme of my desktops -- there's a lot of good places to look, specifically deviantart has a large number from back in the day. There's also this reddit thread about it with a bunch of good links.

[littlelum]

In high school, on my old laptop, I found this tool that would replace you wallpaper with either a GIF or video. I didn't really use it though, because it ended up being too distracting for me. (And the fact that it would pause whenever you maximized a window. It was too save CPU/RAM/whatever, but I found that jarring)

[fablefound]

i don't have much to share, but i'll second the sectioned wallpaper! it's been a total godsend for keeping things relatively organized, and super satisfying to put together and maintain... at least in my experience, and i'll be the first to admit i'm a bit of a nerd about this kinda thing  i also update mine every season, and have a little corner for pictures that're important to me. i just cobbled it together from a template in canva but i'm really happy with the result

[wolfkitty42]

i found out about windows media player skins recently, and ive found that super awesome... id love a way to alter my desktop ui in general if anyone knows how.

i used to use an extension to have a very flashy gif background, but i dont use it anymore because it created too much lag :(

[lakes]

i found out about windows media player skins recently, and ive found that super awesome... id love a way to alter my desktop ui in general if anyone knows how.

i used to use open shell for the start menu & retrobar for the taskbar when i was on windows 10
this website, the frutiger aero archive, also has various software & themes for customization on this page with the links to open shell & retrobar
but the full on transformation packs listed can be more resource intensive
so keep that in mind

[wolfkitty42]

i used to use open shell for the start menu & retrobar for the taskbar when i was on windows 10
this website, the frutiger aero archive, also has various software & themes for customization on this page with the links to open shell & retrobar
but the full on transformation packs listed can be more resource intensive
so keep that in mind

Thank you so much!!! I'll definitely check it out when I have time... I'm on Windows 11 so I don't think I can use the same software as you, but I definitely see a couple softwares there for Windows 11....

Also, I wanted to add the other stuff I forgot in my original post! I also have a custom sound system. I don't really remember how I did it since it's been a long time..... I probably used a wikihow article for it, though. XD Wikihow is my beloved!!! I just use a bunch of old fashioned sounds from older OS, since I find it fun.

I also have a custom SBURB cursor! I think customizing your cursor can be really fun.... It took me a bit to get used to and I still sometimes struggle since the hitbox is going to be different, but I think it's such a fun way to make your desktop feel more like yours! It's also really nice if you find a good high quality one that has lots of different sprites....

[homozygotte]

hi so i got a hold of retrobar & atm my task bar is the windows xp embedded style its real purdy
ialso decided to get winamp and ive been ripping sum cds + adding other music ive downloaded in the past

id like to get open shell, but ive heard that on windows 11 (my current os)(it sucks balls) its kinda buggy HOWEVER ill also be looking into startallback which ive heard that its an overall better resource for start menu themes than open shell

right now im in the process of changing app icons w/ resource hacker! thanks for all the suggestions

[b3e3e3]

check out windowblinds! works on win 10 and 11. there's a skin called eXperience that makes the window style look like XP. i just use the Luna and Silver themes, but i'm sure they have other ones like embedded, zune, longhorn, etc. here's a pic from the deviantart page. note that personally, i still prefer retrobar  

[homozygotte]

HEYA heres my desktop at this very moment


thanks for all da help and suggestions
ill look more into other programs and such like windowblinds a bit later

[lakes]

HEYA heres my desktop at this very moment


thanks for all da help and suggestions
ill look more into other programs and such like windowblinds a bit later

looks great
btw windowblinds is a bit of a memory hog
so while it looks great, i'd only recommend it if you have good hardware
i know this because i tried the free trial a couple of times

[homozygotte]

good  2 kno..... might not be the best for my pc then since i have pretty bad problems with lag off and on

im pretty happy with my current setup though. makes going on my pc a lot more enjoyable