Credit: Pankil Shah / MakeUseOf

I used to treat my desktop like a junk drawer. Whenever I downloaded something or needed quick access to a file, I’d toss it onto the desktop and tell myself I’d sort it later. Of course, that day never came. It got to a point where my beautiful Windows wallpaper was barely visible under the sea of shortcuts, screenshots, and random PDFs I’d forgotten even existed.

Then I discovered Fences, and everything changed. It’s a desktop organization tool that makes it ridiculously easy to group and arrange icons. The best part about it is that it doesn’t force me to sacrifice the convenience of having lots of icons just to keep things clean.

Fences

OS Windows

Price model $9.99/year

Stardock Fences is a desktop organization tool that lets you group and arrange your icons easily.

Fences offers a better way to group desktop icons

Watch chaos snap into order

The moment you open the Fences app for the first time, it gives you the option to apply a layout. Click it, and the app takes all those scattered icons and organizes them into tidy, labeled containers that make sense. From there, you can take over and organize things even further to your liking.

You can resize fences and move them around like any other app window. Clicking the three horizontal lines in the top left corner of a fence opens options to rename it, change the view, and adjust the sort order. And if you want to remove a fence entirely, click the X icon in the top right corner. All the icons that were inside that fence will arrange automatically to the left side of the desktop.

If you want to create a new fence of your own, simply draw a rectangle on your desktop and select Create Fence here. Enter a name for it and start dropping icons onto that fence. As you drop your icons anywhere inside the fence, they’ll organize themselves automatically.

And it gets better. If you create what Fences calls a Folder Portal, you can pull an entire folder directory onto the desktop. This way, you can access its contents without ever opening File Explorer. This is handy if you have a specific folder that you use every day.

Fit more icons on your desktop with tabs and pages

Say goodbye to icon overload

Even with neat fences, sometimes there’s just too much to fit on a single screen. That doesn’t mean you have to compromise and remove some of your icons. You can simply drag one fence over another to create a tab group. Holding the Shift key while dragging lets you change the tab order and detach a fence from the group.

If creating tabs still doesn’t make enough room, you can use desktop pages. They work a lot like home screen pages on your phone. Head to Fences app, select Pages, and tick the Enable pages checkbox. Now, grab and pull the left or right edge of your desktop, and you can move to the second page.

You can also swipe between pages by middle-clicking anywhere on the desktop. These extra pages are great for storing icons you don’t need that often.

Make your fences look good

Enjoy endless customization

The Fences app doesn’t force you into a one-style-fits-all layout. Once you’ve got your desktop icons organized, you can get creative. Open the Fences app and click the Personalization tab. Here you’ll find options to adjust the background color, icon tint, tab styles, and more. You can tweak the hue, brightness, and transparency of each fence so they blend or stand out exactly how you want.

Organizing desktop icons doesn’t mean you have to bury the wallpaper you worked hard to find. One of my favorite features is that you can double-click anywhere on your desktop, and it instantly hides all your fences. Double-click again, and everything pops right back. Similarly, double-clicking the title bar of a fence collapses it. Another useful option is the Chameleon effect, which blends your icons with the desktop wallpaper.

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Let Fences organize your icons automatically

A desktop that maintains itself

By default, Fences moves any new desktop icon with other general icons on the left side. But you can change that with the Rules tab. Here, you can configure the app to automatically sort icons into different groups based on their type, name, or other conditions.

Once your rules are set, your desktop becomes self-organizing. You get to enjoy a clean workspace without having to babysit every new icon that shows up.

Good organization does not come free

My desktop finally feels like a space designed for me instead of a dumping ground. Fences is a solid app, but the convenience comes at a price. It costs $10 a year, which can feel like a total bargain or a bit much depending on how much you value an organized desktop. If you are in the latter camp, there are also free alternatives to Fences that you can try.