Crystal Desktop

Crystal Desktop is designed to help you better manage your work on the computer, facilitating virtual desktops to toggle, thus making it easier to find icons and applications on cluttered desktops.

The app creates an icon in the system tray area at startup along with three numbered buttons right next it, giving you direct access to all the virtual desktops. It is also possible to show an on-screen switcher to accomplish this task and to set up the configuration.

You can hide the tray icon, enable Crystal Desktop's autorun at Windows startup, hide tray notifications, enable drag-and-drop support (Linux, KDE method), as well as increase or decrease the number of virtual desktops (the first option applies only for the registered edition).

The application lets you adjust the switcher transparency level, choose another UI language, remove the app from the taskbar, use and reconfigure keyboard shortcuts (e.g. next or previous desktop, switch to a particular desktop), as well as set up rules for each desktop (e.g. each desktop has its own desktop icons, wallpaper and screen resolution, enable passwords).

Moreover, you can add if..then rules (e.g. if a window's name contains a specific item or EXE file name, then move it to a particular desktop) and mention exceptions (names of active windows or classes).

Crystal Desktop is low-demanding when it comes to the CPU and memory, so it doesn't slow down overall performance. It is very responsive to commands and works well, without making Windows hang, crash or pop up error notifications. Too bad that the app has not been updated for a very long time. Otherwise, Crystal Desktop should satisfy all users, thanks to its intuitive layout and rich customization preferences.