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 300 megabytes 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

• Download Desktop Minder 2026.10.28 (91 MB)

The version is the day the program was built.

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 300 MB of disk space for the program, on the drive Windows is on. 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.
• 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. When it's done, it offers to start the program. If a copy is already running, Setup asks to close it first.

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

The Settings sheet has a Check for Updates button, and a box to have it look when it starts. It always asks before it downloads anything, and asks again before it closes itself and runs the new Setup over the old one. You can also just download the new Setup from this page and run it.

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, 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.