DeskView is a free and a very lightweight tool that lets you arrange desktop icons in a list with small icons. This arranges the icons while keeping the icon size the same (in Window 7), while changing the icon size in Windows XP. DeskView does not require any installation and works on most of the versions of Windows.
The list view lets you easily locate an icon for your software or document placed on the Desktop.
Now the Desktop that we have on the image looks a lot tidier than what I had before using DeskView (you wouldn’t wanna see how it looked like). As the Desktop is my favorite dumping ground where I put almost anything from downloaded software, documents that I get as attachments, my image files and sometimes I even install software when I am expected to choose a path for the installation. I even think if this was the real purpose of the “Desktop”.
We can choose the size of the icons we want on the desktop (Large, Medium or Small) and even resize it further by holding down the “Ctrl” key and using the scroll wheel of the mouse. This would definitely be helpful when you have a lots of junk icons on the Desktop and really hard for you to even find a simple icon out of the mess, no matter how vivid and flamboyant the icons might look like. The icon problem becomes even better when you have a wallpaper set up and you can’t really compromise with that image set in the background that inspires you (with tears in my eyes) when you turn on your computer while at work.
How to use this software to Arrange Desktop Icons:
We can’t do much about the wallpaper (and I wouldn’t personally agree to remove by plain black wallpaper) so we can use this little tool named “DeskView” that clears out the gibberish off the desktop and arranges it in a list. I love the list view when I want to look for a file in a folder as it shows you the files in a list so you can set your mind to scan the list sequentially until you find the file you’re looking for. But, this is not the case when it comes to searching for a file in the normal view where you tend to roll your eye balls at random locations and end up taking more time. DeskView tends to shrink the space in between the icons and provides more space for more things to go on to the desktop.
To use DeskView, you simple need to download the compressed file from the website and extract it to a folder. Once extracted, all you need to do is to double-click on DeskView to launch it to arrange desktop icons in a list.
If you want to bring back the old view of the Desktop, you can do that by double clicking on DeskView again to undo the changes done by DeskView.
In case plain lists are not your thing and you would rather go with some interesting layouts to arrange desktop icons, you would love these: CircleDock, RocketDock, ObjectDock, SliderDock.
Adding it to the startup
You can add DeskView to the startup to run it automatically when you start your computer. You can simple copy the file to the “Startup” folder to achieve this. In Windows 7, you can open the Startup folder by clicking on the “Start” Menu (the little orb with Windows logo on it, in the bottom left corner of the screen) and clicking on the “Programs” menu. From the Programs Menu, you can choose “Startup” folder, right-click on it and choose “Open” to open it. Now you can simply copy the file into this folder and it will be executed when you restart your computer. For Windows XP, the procedure remains the same. You can click on the “Start” Menu button to browse to “All Programs” menu and opening the “Startup” folder from the list. Alternatively, you can use a software to do this.
Conclusion
DeskView is a simple a useful tool that can quickly arrange desktop icons in a list view by shrinking the space between icons. As, I have tried it on Windows XP and Windows 7, it works perfectly without any compatibility issues. Though on Windows XP, it shrinks the size of the icon to however this actually makes it even better as I could see it. If you’re one of those (that includes me) who would like to use the Desktop to the fullest and have a lots of icons (useful or useless), you should use this tool while you still sane (looking for icons make me go crazy).
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