Desktop Icon Toy

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on August 07, 2009

Desktop Icon Toy is a fun and useful utility that allows users to customize the display of their desktop icons. The program combines a variety of features in an easy-to-use format.

The program's interface consists of a slide-out menu that's accessed from the system tray, with the program's features neatly arranged within. The online Help file doesn't go into much detail about the program's features, but most of them are fairly self-explanatory, and users should be able to quickly figure them out. The less obvious features have tool-tip explanations that describe their functions. The program allows users to arrange their desktop icons into stars, hearts, polygons, and other shapes. We were particularly impressed with the clock option, which arranges icons into an analog clock that actually keeps time. Of course, this isn't the most practical feature, as it makes it hard to locate a given icon, but it's still cool. The program has more utilitarian options as well, such as the feature to align icons on the top, bottom, and sides of the desktop. There are also effects like animations, icon hiding, and text hiding that make this program both fun and useful. It was easy to play around with features and undo things we didn't like, making the program enjoyable to use, unlike many desktop customizations.

Desktop Icon Toy has a 14-day trial period, which is plenty of time for evaluation. It installs without issues but leaves a folder behind upon removal. We recommend this program to all users.

Publisher's Description

From iDeskSoft:

Desktop Icon Toy is a desktop icon enhancement tool that allows you to make many funny but useful things for your windows desktop icons. What cool things could you do with Desktop Icon Toy? Arrange Desktop Icons: You can arrange desktop icons by many complex figures, like: Clock (all the icons will be aligned as a clock, showing the exact time) Circle, Cross, Around, Spiral, Horizontal Ellipse, Vertical Ellipse. Triangle, Rhombus, Pentagon, Hexagon. 4-pointed Star, 5-pointed Star, 6-pointed Star, Hearts Align to left, right, top or bottom. Animate Desktop Icons: With Desktop Icon Toy, you could add a hover effect by placing the mouse over a desktop icon. This makes the icon dance. Mouse Gesture: You can simply hold down the left mouse button in the empty area of desktop, and then move mouse to right (left, top or bottom) and release it. All icons will be arranged to right (left, top or bottom) Show/hide Desktop Icons or Icon Texts on Demand: With Desktop Icon Toy, your desktop icons or icon texts could be always hidden. And only would be shown when you really need them (like click desktop, mouse over desktop or over desktop icons). Now, you could be always enjoying your beautiful wallpaper. Hide Desktop Icon Texts: You can remove the classic ugly text of desktop icons, optional, instead of a cool pop-up tooltip. The whole desktop will become neat and tidy. Lock Desktop Icons: Besides save and restore icons layout, Desktop Icon Toy also allows you to lock the desktop icons. Don't worry about carelessly moving your icons again. Other Features: Save different icons' layout according to different screen resolution. Save multiple layouts by different layout names. Automatically re-layout/restore-layout when change screen resolution, or add/delete icons. Remove desktop icon shortcut overlay. Transparent background of desktop icon texts. Change the font color and background color of desktop icon texts.

What's new in this version: 1. Improved - Significantly improved hover effect performance. 2.Improved - By default, 64 bit version will install into "Program Files", instead of "Program Files (x86)". 3.Fixed - Animation layout not work if there are too many icons (more than 100) on desktop.