Loving W10 virtual desktops!

[mmTL]

Hello everyone, although we waited a long time for virtual desktops on Windows out-of-the-box, MS really nailed it with how easy the feature is to use. I know other OSs/Desktop Environments have had the feature for a long time but somehow very few of them made it easy to configure/navigate (with the possible exception of Cinnamon on Mint).

On W10 you hit Win+TAB for a preview, and add a desktops on the fly (and wow that is really fast) or you hit Ctrl+Win+D to create and move to a new desktop. Then Ctrl+Win and left/right arrow to cycle through them at top speed. No fluff, no 100's of options to set - it just works.

I also like how if you're in Task View and you switch desktops, then the display remains in Task View across all desktops - nice.

 

[Steve Thackery]

There are some pretty serious limitations, though. For instance, the desktops don't persist between reboots. Also, you can't assign applications to desktops, such that starting an application moves it (and you) automatically to the relevant desktop. For instance, I have desktops 'Main', 'University', 'Programming' and 'Media' (which persist between reboots), and my PC automatically switches to the Media desktop when I start Paint Shop Pro. Of course it's an optional feature.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the desktop icons appear on all the desktops? So really you aren't switching to a new desktop so much as switching different groups of programs in and out of view.

Personally I love virtual desktops and I'm delighted that W10 has them. I also think that the way they've been incorporated into the standard user interface is masterful - no "speed bumps" or conceptual difficulties at all, just a super-easy extension of the traditional task switching interface. I think MS should get a lot of credit for making the best-integrated virtual desktop environment I've ever seen.

However, I prefer the extra functionality I mentioned above, so actually I use Dexpot. (There are other similar programs.)