If you love a coordinated and stylish desktop, then you really need to try Curtains . Taking advantage of the groundwork built to support light and dark mode, Curtains will let you apply new styles along the lines of Dark and Light Modes to Windows® 10. It also includes styles that will let you make Windows look like Windows XP, Windows 95, or other operating systems! Use the built-in style editor and can create your own Style modes! We just released v1.1 y...
When I first came to Stardock and started learning about all of our software, one program in particular eluded my understanding: Multiplicity. What exactly is Multiplicity? Why on earth would I ever need to use it? It felt somewhat intimidating to me. However, having spent more time using the application, I've discovered that it's far more convenient and useful than I originally realized. My personal use of Multiplicity is fairly modest, though I know there are plenty of other peo...
Today we're going to talk a bit about the history and evolution of WindowBlinds, which released all the way back in 1999 (for the mathematically challenged, that's 21 years ago...yikes!). WindowBlinds was the first program that let users customize the look and feel of the Windows GUI and is still widely popular today. Although the start of WindowBlinds was long before I came to Stardock (I started here in September 2015), I took a dive through the forums and the website to take a look all the...
Video streaming and video content creation have risen greatly in popularity over the past few years. Video game streaming alone has turned into a multi-million dollar industry, and even just hobbyists are getting in on the action. Video creators like vloggers and many other channels on YouTube have created an amazing resource of educational and entertainment content. If you're a streamer or content creator, you can use Multiplicity to help increase your productivity and delegation of your w...
Changing the default icons is one of the earliest and most popular ways to customize the look and feel of Windows. Whether users were trying to emulate another operating system (like MacOS) or just trying to create a particular theme, changing the Windows icons has been a key part of desktop customization for quite some time. IconPackager was introduced to make the process much easier, allowing Windows users to change nearly an entire set of icons with just the click of a button.
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In one of my last blogs , I downloaded and tried out ObjectBar on my Windows 10 laptop. It was a fun experiment, and I enjoyed reading your comments on whether we should try to bring back ObjectBar. Since that got such a good response, I'd like to take a look at another app that was quite popular many years ago. It's one of my personal favorites: RightClick . RightClick was first released somewhere around 2005, and was made in order to let Windows XP users greatly enhance the right-cli...
SkinStudio doesn't get as much attention from the general skinning consumer since it's primary focus is the creation of skins, but lets not forget its importance as it plays a big role in bringing us skins for WindowBlinds . Over the years we've tried to make SkinStudio easier for new users to start creating skins, while keeping the advanced editing available for our experienced skinners. With SkinStudio, you can skin as much or as little as you want of the interface. You can th...
I was doing some updates with Object Desktop on my laptop and while grabbing an installer file from my account, I noticed the download for ObjectBar. Wow, that brought back some memories of skinning. ObjectBar would let you create and use your own start menus, docks, sidebars, etc. and was very customizable in both functionality and skinning. It was quite popular in the past, especially with people looking to transform their Windows desktop to imitate the look and feel of a Mac desktop.&nbs...
Last year, Microsoft released “Dark Mode” to Windows 10 users. Dark Mode gave users an alternative color and style option to the Windows GUI. Now, Stardock is preparing to release a new customization program called Curtains. Curtains works similarly to the modes that Microsoft has implemented. Any app that already supports the existing dark and light modes will automatically benefit from Curtains. Stardock Curtains Stardock Curtains includes s...
About 2 years ago, I built my first PC . It was a long time coming - I’d been using a friend’s older computer ever since mine went up in flames (dramatic, but also kind of literal) and it was really starting to lag terribly when I played games. I had decided that I wanted to build it myself in order to become more informed about the process, since I worked at a PC gaming/software company. I’ll never do it again , but I learned a lot! One of the most notable diff...
This PC is using Windows 10. But not just Windows 10 on its own. It's been upgraded a bit with Object Desktop . That's what Object Desktop does. A lot of the things in Windows we see today first showed up in Object Desktop. A few examples include transparencies, shadows, gadgets, ZIP files as folders, GUI skinning, etc. There is a natural progression to the operating system. On this screenshot I have Groupy, CursorFX, Fences, Start10 and a new app that ha...
Prior to coming to Stardock, I never got to work from home. I was the director of an afterschool program for K-4 kiddos and if you couldn’t be in the “office,” then you couldn’t work. Making the shift into an industry that is already largely digital was certainly different, and even though I would work the occasional day from home, I generally prefer to be in the office (there are some pretty great people there, after all). Now I’m working at home on the...
There are dozens of quotes that express something along the lines of “disorganization is a sign of intelligence.” Well, if that’s true, then my computer is evidence that I’m a dang genius . Don't let the image below fool you - this is definitely an 'after' shot. The above image is after I'd painstakingly organized. Fences has a lot of fantastic features to help with desktop organization (and, admittedly, I don’t take adv...
I have to admit: before I came to Stardock, I'd never given much thought to desktop customization. Don't get me wrong! I changed my screensaver to slideshows of my college years and updated the background on my desktop as much as anyone else. But, I had no idea about the depth of customization I'd been missing out on, or the kind of community that existed out there in the world of the Internet. Whether I want to completely change the look of Windows or just add some minimal ch...
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time at my computer. I also really enjoy displaying aspects of my personality all over my desk - so, why not also on my computer desktop? I accomplish this using an app called DeskScapes. DeskScapes is an application for Windows 10/8/7 that lets you apply animated backgrounds to your desktop, as well as customize and manage static backgrounds by adding effects or recoloring your existing backgrounds. I love having so many option...