What is macdesk?

MacDesk brings the way macOS handles desktop icons over to Windows. It draws its own icon layer that sits above the wallpaper and below every open window, and instead of storing icon positions as fixed pixel coordinates the way Windows normally does, it stores each icon's position as a distance from an edge or corner. That means when your screen resolution, DPI, or monitor setup changes, the icons keep the same relative arrangement and reflow smoothly, rather than collapsing into the top left corner the way the native Windows desktop does. It has been tested on Windows 11, including multi-monitor setups with mixed DPI settings. You install it from a release page as either a per-user installer that needs no admin rights, or a portable zip you unzip and run directly. Updating later is a single click inside the app's settings. The feature list is extensive. It supports Wallpaper Engine live wallpapers running underneath the icons with no extra performance cost, real desktop interactions like double-click to open, native right-click menus, renaming, deleting to the Recycle Bin, multi-select, and drag and drop, all backed by the actual Windows shell so behavior matches what users already expect. It recreates macOS style Stacks for grouping icons by kind, date, or size, including folder stacks that expand and collapse like a Dock folder. Other features include toggles for showing or hiding system icons like This PC or the Recycle Bin, automatic backups of your icon layout with export and import for moving to a new machine, clipboard based file operations, a clean-up and sort menu, a free placement mode, and per-monitor icon ownership so unplugging a screen consolidates its icons onto your main display without losing their original spots. A small background watchdog process relaunches the icon layer quickly if Windows Explorer restarts or crashes, and the settings window follows your system's light or dark theme and lets you change the interface language, accent color, and performance options. The only network access the app makes is for its own one-click updater, with no telemetry.