The best Shell Extension alternative to Fences is Portals: Desktop Organization, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to Fences and eight of them are Shell Extensions so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Shell Extension alternatives to Fences are Nimi Places, Sideslide, Folderview Screenlet and Coodesker.
Create containers (aka Portals) on your desktop which show the contents of a specified folder. Divide your desktop into folders then use Portals to display the contents of the folders in an organized fashion - you can even hide the folders away somewhere else.
Free and beautiful. A must have.
Organizes desktop into customizable containers showing folder contents as icons/thumbnails on a scrollable surface. Has lots of management features: e.g. labelling; sort by category; time & location based settings. Thumbnails are displayed for supported Open Documents, PSD images & PDFs.
Free, and it works almost the same. Just has a little more setup than Fences does.
This performs ONE of Fences' secondary functions: displaying the contents of directories OTHER THAN the Desktop as virtual containers on the Desktop. IT IS NOT for organizing Desktop icons/files or setting up automatic rules for categorization of new Desktop icons/files.
Nimi Places is not an exact replica of Fences, but(!) it will give you the look and feel. Instead of everything being on your desktop, it links it a folder. I am just going to change my behavior a tad and just know that my files, when placed in the fence, are not stored on the actual desktop. I still have easy access to move the files between the desktop to fence and vice versa, which is most important to me.
SideSlide is an advanced, portable, unobtrusive, dockable, skinnable, instantly accessible, highly configurable Desktop Extension on Steroids! Clean desktop clutter and make your computer friendlier and faster than ever before.
Very full featured program with a steep learning curve, but it's worth it.
Because it's not similar and easy to use like Fences that is a very intuitive application
It's a very comprehensive program with lots of features that can change the way you work with Windows.
Folderview Screenlet is a Linux alternative to Fences (which is for Windows).
by far the best alternative to Stardock Fences, better even than Stardock Fences itself.
Very easy to use and customize, it's lightweight, cheap, available on Steam or their website for a one time purchase, and pretty much does everything Fences does but better.
It's really lightweight, fast and does what it supposed to. I've been looking to replace Fences for about a year or two now, on and off and I'm telling you, this should be at the top of this list.
DeskRipple puts expandable folder icons directly on the Windows desktop. They sit alongside your regular desktop icons, open into shortcut panels on hover or click, and collapse to a single icon when the pointer moves away.
A Central Hub for User-Categorized Shortcuts to Apps, Files & Folders, Quick Access to Drives & System Folders with PC Info & Resource Monitoring Dashboards and One-Click Access to Common Windows Operations.
A lightweight Windows desktop organizer with AI-powered cleanup, movable docks, and an encrypted vault — free 7-day trial, no account needed.
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It looks like windows native.