// Desktop organiser
ViPad
A free desktop organiser for Windows.
If your desktop has turned into a wall of icons you can't find anything in, ViPad is the fix. Everything you launch — apps, files, folders, links — goes into one tidy grid, sorted into tabs you name yourself. Type to find something. Click to open it. Your actual desktop can go back to being a wallpaper.
It's free. Not free-for-30-days, not free-with-an-account — free, and the source is on GitHub. I've been giving this stuff away since 2007 and I'm not about to start charging for it now.
If you got here looking for a Fences alternative
A lot of people land here after searching for a free alternative to Stardock Fences or Nimi Places, so let me be straight with you about how ViPad compares — because it solves the same problem a different way, and you should know that before you download anything.
Fences leaves your icons on the desktop and draws labelled areas around them. ViPad takes the opposite approach: it gives you one grid that holds everything, and lets you hide the desktop icons entirely. Same goal — a desktop you can actually think in — different route.
What ViPad does that you're probably after: groups shortcuts into named tabs, searches them as you type, holds files and web links as happily as apps, sticks to the desktop so it's always there, and hides the underlying icon sprawl.
What it doesn't do, so you're not disappointed: it won't automatically sort your existing icons into rule-based groups, there's no roll-up-on-double-click, and no snapshot-and-restore of desktop layouts. If those specific behaviours are what you want, Fences does them well and it's worth its money. ViPad is for people who'd rather clear the desktop than organise it in place.
What it does
- Tabs with categorised icons — apps, files, links, folders.
- Live keyword search that filters as you type.
- Auto-pagination when a tab gets too full.
- "Stick to desktop" mode so it's always there, and "hide desktop" to clear the icons underneath.
- Adjustable icon sizes from small to absurd (up to 256×256).
- Touch / finger-gesture support — swipe between pages on a touchscreen.
%appdata%\ViPad\settings.xmlexposes everything for power-users who want to edit by hand.
Where it stands
Last shipped: 2.0.0.17 (March 2023). Runs on Windows 11, 10, 8 and 7. The "open-source-desktop-launcher" build is the current one — same app, just renamed when the source went public.
VB6 codebase at github.com/lee-soft/ViPad. .NET port not started yet.
Some places ViPad turned up
"It helps you in organizing all your shortcuts easily and efficiently." — AskVG
"During testing, we marked the Hide Desktop and Stick to Desktop options in the settings and maximized the application to full-screen mode, and simply put it looked awesome." — AddictiveTips
Want to know when there's a new version?
One email when something actually ships — a new release, or a rewrite landing. Nothing else, no schedule to keep to, and you can tell me to stop whenever. It's free software and it stays that way.
Your address goes in a file on my server and nowhere else — no mailing-list company, no tracking. Privacy.