Review: VirtuaWin – The Virtual Desktop Manager
It’s been a few days now since I last reviewed a piece of software so I guess it’s time. This time around I am reviewing a neat little open source application called VirtuaWin.
VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system that allows you to manage multiple applications over virtual desktops (or workspaces). Some of you might be familiar with this concept if you’ve used one of the many flavors of Linux.
One of the things I love about this app is the size. The binary is only 382kb and downloads in just a few seconds. It’s also super easy to configure. The only tweaking I had to do was name the four virtual desktops I was going to use and assign them each a hot key. I’ve set VirtuaWin up to use the Windows Key plus the numbers 1 through 4 (respective to the virtual desktop I created).
There are a ton of options that can be set but really the name and hot keys were all I had to do to get it set up and running. One option I would consider setting up is the mouse functions. You can set VirtuaWin to let the mouse direct which virtual desktop is selected. I did try it out and it was pretty neat. When I would move the mouse off the right side of the screen it would move over one virtual desktop and when I moved the mouse off the bottom of the screen under the taskbar it would go down one virtual desktop. OK so my terminology is a little off but if you look at the screen shot that shows the little tray icon you will see what I mean. It’s separated into four quadrants.
On the VirtuaWin website you can find a bunch of add-ons (called modules) and icon sets. It’s a very configurable and customizable program.
The one and only thing that I was able to find that I didn’t like was the sheer amount of settings. You can get quite involved in tweaking. My personal preference is dead simple and I’m not a huge fan of tweaking. I prefer to run things more or less “out of the box”. Regardless, once I figured out which options I needed to change I was all set to go in just a matter of minutes. It took me a lot longer to write this post than it did to learn how to use the program.
You can get VirtuaWin here.
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Comments
yeh, same here man… was searching for a review before I jumped in. Thanks for taking the time to write it up!
I love VirtuaWin!!!! I run as a 3×3 setup and use one of the 3×3 icon sets from the app site. Anyway, I feel it is a HUGE productivity booster and overall just great app that make things better.
Another tool is Mosaico from Soulid Studio (www.soulidstudio.com). It’s a little bit different because you can arrange windows and take a “snapshot” to restore later. So you can have the same window in many “virtual desktops” (aka snapshots). It also do an automatica arrangement of windows that make them occupy all the monitor surface. And when you drag or resize windows it accomodates the other ones to mantain the monitor surface full covered.
TheNerd,
Your review convinced me to try this software. Thanks for taking the time to review it!
Best Regards,
Eli