xDesk2

For a very long time, you had to manually change your desktop background picture if you got bored of it, until Microsoft finally introduced an option to create rotating picture collections. However, animated backgrounds are not a common customization feature, but with xDesk2 it becomes as easy as pressing a few mouse buttons.

The application spends all of its time in the tray area, and is also the place where you can trigger playback controls, especially since there’s no main window, or control toolbar which can be brought on the desktop. As such, loading a file also needs to be done through the tray area with the browse dialog.

File support isn’t abundant, but you are able to target some popular video formats like MOV, DAT, MPG, AVI, ASF, and WMV. Unfortunately, there’s no playlist editor, so unless you want to keep changing the video every now and then, you’d best make sure it’s a lengthy, and interesting one. Sadly, the application only works with local files, and can’t stream media from video websites.

The entire desktop background becomes a video screen as soon as the clip loads. You can still interact with all elements, but shortcuts start to flicker during playback. There’s is a built-in option to hide the desktop, but this also affects the video. Luckily, simply hiding desktop icons from the desktop context menu solves this inconvenience.

Additional options allow you to loop the video, and even make the application run with Windows to play the video as soon as you reach the desktop. Playback controls can be accessed from the corresponding tray icon. On the other hand, these can also be triggered through hotkeys for more comfort, but you need to learn them, because they can’t be changed.

On an ending note, xDesk2 offers a neat desktop enhancement options, especially if you don’t use the space to store any shortcuts or folders. Window management is not affected, so you can freely see to your tasks. The only thing missing here is a playlist editor so you don’t have to manually change the video every now and then.