Hello,

I have forwarded your report to the Stardock support team for their review and recommendations.

Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates.

We really do appreciate your feedback, thanks.

AzDude
Stardock Community Assistant

I would like to second the call for a "Sticky Notes" type of application within Fences (Replies #94, #95)

I use multiple Fences Desktop "Pages" but "regular" Sticky programs (I use Zhorn Stickies) do not know how to handle those. The result is, that a "regular" sticky will be displayed on ALL pages (Similar to the "View ==> "Show this Fence on all Pages" option). This can be VERY annoying as a given sticky may only relate to one single specific desktop page.

Similar to above, desktop "gadgets" will always show up on ALL pages. A way of having them appear only on one, or on a number of specified pages, would clean up my desktop pages considerably.

A somewhat related suggestion: Currently, a fence can be displayed either on one single page or on all pages. It would be nice to have an option to be able to specify, which pages a given fence is displayed on. For example, I would like to be able to see a given fence on pages 1 and 3 rather than just on page 1 or on all pages.

When in Roll-up made it would be nice if an user selectable icon could be shown on the rolled up fence. Or an icon from an item in that Fence.

Please also have an option to be able to start a program by single clicking on the icon in the Fence.

Tabs being stick to the edge vertically would be great 

This is mostly about sorting options QOL stuff.

Thank you for all you do.

• Roll-up directions from chosen direction
  • Top, Bottom, Left, Right

• Ability to make roll-up (collapsed) size independent of expanded size.  --
  • Options
    • like if we could make them just big enough for the text (choose 0.5 to whatever in increments of 0.1, either unified (all same) independent or auto size to text with "X" padding),
    • have them expand to what ever size we choose, and or auto size to the amount of available icons (auto size shape could be based on the screen ratio 4:3, 16:9 etc).

• Fix the New icons not going to the proper folder bug that has been around for years (installers don't seem to trigger what ever watcher is set to trigger the sort function)
  • 7-zip extraction seems to have the same effect of not triggering the "hey put my crap here plz" function.

• Select-able Z-order
  • options
    • Always
    • Never
    • On-top when Modifier held (alt, ctrl, etc)
    • Inverted of the previous...because "that one person"

• Access frequency based sorting.
  • top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right (to be compatible with the roll up directions)

• Sort from:
  • Position
    • top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right
  • Direction
    • Up (Up), Down (Down), Left, Right (Left, Right, B, A, start )

• Option to give Fences more "power" when desktop focused, (I'm on an i9-9900KF with dual 1080s an the folders are laggy with 100+ icons, Probably not your fault)

• Dual Type sorting like in windows explorer
  • Click, Shift Click (on an explorer window in details view)

• Folder Portals
  • Emulate all view types and sorting from explorer and the above   

• Boot Priority
  • Load first and auto hide icons until Fences is ready to work. (the unsorted disaster that is my desktop while fences loads, is a constant reminder of my bad life choices on every boot up)
    • maybe toggle auto hide when windows shuts down and turn it off when fences is loaded? idk

Again, Thank you all for the hard work you put in. Every time i show my laptop to a co-worker, they ask where they can get Fences. It is the "missing link" to desktop management

https://community.windows.com/en-us/stories/virtual-desktop-windows-10 

Is there any way to turn off snapping / auto arranging within a Fence?  Basically, instead of it always forcing the items to the top left corner, I would like to be able to move the items around within the fence, not on a grid, not sorted, and have it keep my arrangement (just like my windows desktop behaves).  Also, it would be ideal if this would apply to Folder Portals.

Some background - Windows used to allow disabling auto-arrange in any folder, but has been removing this feature in recent versions.  This is a very popular feature (just search for people looking for how to disable auto arrange in windows 10), is one of the primary reasons people’s desktops get so cluttered because they like being able to arrange and group on their desktops but can’t in any other folder.

While the fences helps by organizing the clutter on the desktop, you could market to many more people if you allowed this flexibility and targeted people who are looking for the removed "disable auto arrange" feature in windows folders. 

My ideal situation would be to create a Folder Portal for any folder, and within it, be able to manually move items around, not on a grid and not sorted.  

Feature requested by wisefix (reply #72) has been asked for in various ways (including by me in reply #110).  The amount of labor wisefix went through in the original thread (https://forums.stardock.com/495352/page/1/#3751969) should get someones attention and emphasize just how needed this feature is.

The ability to see which version of fences you are using.

If only......

One could arrange icons where they wanted them....this would be the do all end all of Desktop Organization.

So close.......so painfully close

.

This may be more of a Start10 request, but I don't see a thread over there asking for new features. 

The big problem I had with Fences initially is that they are usually covered up by program windows and tedious to get to.  You provided a nice feature where the fences are on the Start 10 menu under "All Programs".

What would make it perfect is to let me right-click the fence menu item and pin it to the start menu like you can with regular start menu items.

CRUCIAL FEATURE: DIRECT ACCESS TO A PAGE 

One big limitation of the 'page' feature is lack of direct access to them (at least for me). Let's suppose a user have created 10 pages (yeah, it happens with me), then turning pages one by one is sort of time-consuming. If the user want to choose page 1, and then want page 9, that's a lot of trouble.

SOLUTION

I would recommend hotkey from 0-9 to be able to access the page id, for the 10 first pages at least.

Or

When we're turning pages, I noticed there are dots appearing at the bottom of the screen. That would be nice to be able to click them somehow to select a page. Maybe a hotkey could allow us to call those dots and click them. Yet, I would also recommend identifying these dots with a digit or a letter, for the sake of quickly recognizing which dot belong to which page.

OPTIONAL, BUT NOT TO IGNORE

Could even be nicer to edit the name of each desktop page. Just like 'Saved Groups' from the 'Groupy' app, it could be nice to be able to save a desktop page and call it from a file, making pages very powerful.

While these requests might seems exaggerated, I'm a multitask guy working on various projects involving various disciplines (arts, music, writings, coding, etc, etc), it's reason I feel the current Desktop pages feel limited for my needs.

I bought fences because I use my laptop for more than one subject area and having all the different subject areas in one spot caused distraction.

I now have 8 desktop pages but passing through 7 pages to get to number 8 is just not an option. After 6-12 months of usage my conclusion is that I don't visit my desktop pages beyond 1-3. This is a showstopper for me since I like to separate my subject areas and still have a working desktop area for each of them.

Consider the following workflow. I'm on my work-related desktop page and I'm browsing through some news. There is an article relating to say my local politics or the history of science. If I could put all desktop pages "within reach" I can briefly visit them for lookup, or to put something on them. This would include the option of a brief visit to them in my workflow.

What I want to achieve is several separate dedicated workspaces, each of which does not lead my attention to something else. But should I need to visit another workspace, they are all within immediate reach.

I'd prefer to have some keyboard combination pop up a a window with available deskop pages, like the win10 virtual desktop page (winkey-tab), or maybe a menu (less flashing about than an entire page pls).  I'd also like every desktop page on that page/menu/list to have a number and a editable title showing up, for instant keyboard-only switching.

I have slickrun (https://bayden.com/SlickRun/) on alt-Q and alt-J and it works most of the time.  

I have solved the problem of naming deskop pages by putting a fence with the desktop page title at the very top of each desktop page. It works but it's not good enough.

Help me Stardock, you're my only hope.

Yes!

Great idea - accessing desktop pages directly by user defianed keystrokes.

Even Preview in style of Virtual Desktops is great - or - maybe build it into this feature, maybe too big request.
Also - perfect can be namings desktop pages.

Miro

Hey, thanks olaer069 and miiro79, I'm glad I'm not alone with multi-discipline desktop endeavor.

The more I'm thinking about it, the more what I described at the end of my previous post will make multiple desktops heavenly powerful (more than hotkey keystroke). If we could save a page as a clickable file to move directly to x page, then it would be very easy for user management. For example, the user could simply put these saved page files into a folder (or a fence) and simply click the desired file to call the destop layout/page. One advantage of a saved page file is that such file has a name, so it's better for organization.

Hi,

are you working on V4? It has passed a lot of time from latest release...

Thanks

My wish-list for Fences 4 includes these following 3 bug fixes and 1 feature request:

1.

I'd like Fences to remember icons positions on the desktop when switching resolutions. Windows 10 already does this by default, but after installing Fences this ability disappears and each time the resolution is switched the desktop icons become messed-up and all over the place.

I made a thread about this issue here:

https://forums.stardock.com/494182/page/1/

2.

I'd like Fences 4 to fix the bug where icons sometimes don't go to where they're dragged, but go somewhere else. That bug is demonstrated in this video:

https://youtu.be/UPiGp55WQz4

Towards the end of the video, you can see that I select two icons and drag them together, and then when I let go of the mouse button, the icons shoot off in different directions.

3.

I'd like the issue with icons from one page being teleported to another page when the user is in the middle of dragging different icons across the desktop. I have described that issue here:

https://forums.stardock.com/494183/page/1

4.

I'd like Fences to have the option to unhide hidden fences on mouse-over. So no clicks needed to hide, or unhide anything - everything just auto-hides, and then whatever particular fence is moused-over, automatically unhides for the duration of the mouse-over. Preferably with a quick fade-in / out effect.

Else one bug needs fix:

Since Windows has dark mode always after Explorer restart it forces Fences labels color to black. I'm using normal mode, don't know how affect this dark and light modes. I need always to open Fences config and set white color for Fences labels.

Also - really, we are waiting for release, it can be also beta version, is anything new or planned?

Miro

Keeping with the very common theme of people asking for this here...

Allow Fences to open ABOVE other windows.

I'm a new user that is already tired of having to minimize everything. even though I have Fences bars visible.  Also, even if I open a Fence, under the windows, of course, clicking on the Fence doesn't even make it the foreground window...  WTF?

Add a time setting (in ns) for the fences to close when the mouse pointer drifts off of the window.  It's annoying to have these things slam shut because of an errand drift.  Or at least have a 1 sec delay or something.. or allow a reg tweak so we can do it ourselves.  Thanks.

• Option to prevent labels from appearing on folder portal mouse-hover when Show Labels: Never is set so that they work the same as regular fences.    

Couldn't handle having animated labels appearing and disappearing every time I interacted with the folder portal.  So I had to set them to Show Labels: Always not ideal but at least its not distracting. 

• Ability to disable hamburger menu + close button that appears on hover on folder portals with Show Labels: Always

Use of parent arrow button:  multiple times a day.   Use of hamburger menu or close button:  not once in four years

• Ability to be able to set an icon size on your folder portal, and have that size respected on the children folders

Manually resizing icons on new folders is part of my life now

Consequence of the above two bugs

When I resize the folder portal back I have to eyeball it to make it the same width as the fence above.  Would also be nice if fences snapped to the width/height of adjacent fences/portals

.

Roll up on top of windows  +1

Lock desktop position +1

I want fences to be fences.  Enhance what it does but don't turn it into bloat.