In Windows 11 there’s a button on the taskbar next to the start button that lets you switch between multiple desktop environments. It seems like something that would probably be useful in theory, but I can’t think of any reason why I would want to use it. Is it actually useful? What do people use it for?
If it’s anything like Mac’s, it’s a cleaner way to jump between apps without having to constantly adjust your windows. While I work, I have a desktop for Photoshop, Illustrator, Chrome, and one for both Slack and Outlook.
I work as an engineer and I use it like a desktop for each project. Works very well when you need to work on more than one project at a time - all the programs, files, folders, browser tabs for one project are on one screen exactly where I left them, and exactly in the layout where I left off.
I also keep the first desktop as a HOME screen, where I have email, Teams, Zoom, and my timesheet program. If I need to talk to someone about a project while I work on it, I just pop that chat out into a new window and move it to the respective desktop.
The only limitation is that if you open something (like an Excel file) through Windows Explorer on desktop 1, but you have an instance of the program already running on desktop 3, it will jump around the desktops and open on the one where it’s already open. I have no idea why, not all programs do that, but it’s easy to move it to the correct place.
Also it’s even more hand if you learn the keyboard shortcuts.
Sounds like excel is still doing what it has done for a while. Even though windows can finally (again) treat excel instances separately in the task bar, clicking one brings up the single excel window containing all excel files open. So if I open a 2nd excel file, then x it out, the 1st file is on top now. This doesn’t bug me when it’s the browser or Adobe because those at least clearly present as tabbed items and, more importantly, can be broken out to different windows
I did something similar, but was annoyed by all the jumping around when opening excel or word or PDFs… Plus even just having a group of emails and an explorer window open on a couple desktops really starts to eat ram it seems. Forget about solid works in that situation.
If they allowed you to save desktops and fixed the jumping issues it might be useful.
Depot was so much better.
So, if I used SolidWorks or AutoCAD more, it would be a different story. I do most of my work in Revit which is OK on using RAM. And I wish I could save desktops, that’d be cool.
What’s Depot?
Dexpot was a virtual desktop fir Windows that appears to be abandoned
i’m on Linux and i use a grid of 20 desktops… on 2 screens. (so 40 desktops total) but generally it’s a single window per desktop. i have tiling, so windows don’t overlap with each other
I use this regularly on a laptop, but almost never on a desktop.
It’s really nice if you have multiple full screen apps you’re switching back and forth from them pretty regularly, ie IDE in one env, browser in another, both can be full screen and switched without minimizing the other.
Multi Monitor setups often solve the same problem.
How is this different from just alt-tabbing to a different Fullscreen application?
I’ve had cases where a game crashed and I couldn’t open any other window including the task manager. I could alt tab to it, but when I try opening it it would instantly revert back to the crashed game. But if you move task manager to another desktop and switch to that desktop, you can force close the crashed game. Pretty much a fringe case and I’ve never found another reason to use this feature personally.
Did you use Ctrl + Shift + Esc to directly open Task Manager? If so, you may get different results with Ctrl + Alt + Del and choosing it from the manager. C/S/E asks for the manager, C/A/D demands it. I can’t promise the game won’t still override it but a fun fact either way
I have task manager forced front, so even if my game shits the bed the task manager will always appear in front of it.
Oh my God please tell me how to do this
Modded Minecraft frequently shits bricks.
