DeskMakeover vs Desktop Fences+

DeskMakeover is a free Windows desktop customization app for changing icon appearance and arranging icons in zones drawn over wallpaper. It offers nine hand-tuned looks: Squircle, Blueprint, Pixel Era, Gleam, Glaze, Die-Cut, Porthole, Scrapbook, and Creekstone. Shape, coloring, plate, finish, and shortcut mark can be adjusted independently. For organization, users can choose Workbench or Quadrants templates or draw zones themselves, with five materials and four title styles. The studio mirrors the desktop live, supports undo and redo, and can reread icons, arrangement, and wallpaper in one click. Style combinations can be saved, exported as files, and imported as style packs. DeskMakeover snapshots the Windows desktop before changes and says each change can be undone with one click. It installs per-user and runs locally without an account, telemetry, or uploads, according to its maker. The app supports 64-bit Windows 10 version 1809 or newer and Windows 11, not macOS or Linux.

Desktop Fences+ is a free, open-source Windows utility for organizing desktop icons, shortcuts, files and folders into virtual fences. It offers data fences, portal fences that reflect folder contents, and note fences for text. Users can customize colors, borders, titles, icon sizes, spacing and launch effects. A search pane finds shortcuts across data fences. Profiles can switch automatically when programs activate or be selected with hotkeys, while Smart Desktop rules can move files into portal fences or folders. The manual describes backup and restore, and fences can be exported and imported between systems. Supported items include Windows shortcuts, web links, folders, documents and network targets; the changelog also mentions Spotify URI shortcuts and basic Microsoft Store app support. The project is portable and compatible with Windows 10 and 11, but requires a user-writable location and .NET Framework support. The digitalsleuth repository has no releases listed; its README points to the original limbo666 repository for the latest release package.