HiNook

Since modern phones are fitted with powerful cameras, pictures quickly became a frequently used resource, which is also easy to obtain. Chances are you want to keep a cool wallpaper, or just have a slideshow play on your desktop, besides the general desktop picture, and this is exactly where HiNook comes in handy.

A neat advantage is that you don't have to go through the effort of pressing a few "next" buttons to deploy it on your system, which means it's good to go from the moment download is done. More than that, you can store it along with a collection of pictures on a USB flash drive to have your personal slideshow active, regardless of the computer you're using.

The application doesn't read pictures from general Images folders, so it's a good idea to first set up a gallery. This is done in the options panel, from which you can also manage albums, configure the slideshow window and behavior, and decide whether or not you allow it to run on startup.

You can either create custom albums, each with a specific set of pictures, or simply use the default one to fill it with the images of interest. Adding them is either done through drag and drop, or multiple selection possible through the browse dialog. These are automatically saved on exit so you don't risk losing settings and albums. Note that added files are not modified or moved.

The slideshow can be customized in terms of size and appearance. The container is transparent, fading out a bit on mouseover, allowing you to interact with elements in the background. What's more, a slim list shows up on mouseover, letting you change the active picture. The switch interval is specified in minutes, with a minimum value of one minute.

All things considered, we can state that HiNook is a neat desktop enhancement you can keep around to have a slideshow play your favorite pictures without affecting the wallpaper. Pictures of various formats can be used, while flexibility makes it possible to always have a personal slideshow at hand, even for presentation purposes.