IconSaver

IconSaver remembers where your Windows desktop icons are and puts them back when Windows piles them up. It sits in the tray, takes snapshots of the layout on its own schedule and, above all, knows not to save at the moments when the layout is already wrecked.

Where the problem comes from

Usually it's a KVM switch. You switch to another computer, one of the monitors drops out of Windows for a moment, and Explorer immediately repacks every icon onto the screen that's left. It doesn't happen every time — maybe on the hundredth switch back and forth. Not every switch does this, but if yours does, you already know it.

A monitor going to sleep, or a second screen waking up late after a reboot, does the same thing.

Snapshots on schedule and by hand

Every few hours the program records where each icon is. The interval counts from the moment the program starts, so no snapshot is taken right after a reboot — the riskiest moment. Identical snapshots aren't repeated. A manual snapshot is one button or Ctrl+S, and the cleanup of old snapshots never removes it.

One-click restore

Pick a snapshot and press Restore this layout. Before anything moves, the program shows how many icons will move, how many are already in place and which ones are missing from the desktop. The preview shows where the icons stood on each monitor.

KVM protection

The program remembers which set of monitors is your usual one. While any of them is missing, no automatic snapshots are taken at all, however long that lasts. You set it with one button in the settings, This is my normal setup, or simply with your first manual save.

When the monitors come back, the program waits for things to settle, compares the icons with the last good snapshot and warns you in the tray if they scattered.

Protection against a scrambled layout

Moving a couple of icons is tidying up. A third of the desktop moving at once is almost certainly damage. If more than the set share of icons (30% by default) moved since the last snapshot, the program saves nothing over it and warns you.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't touch icons the snapshot doesn't know: anything new stays where it is.
• It can't work with Auto arrange icons on — Windows would rearrange everything straight back. The program warns you about it.
• It tells icons with identical names apart only by their order, not by what they point to. A renamed icon is unknown to older snapshots.
• It doesn't sync layouts between computers and sends nothing to the internet.

Manual

The manual is in English and Russian, with window screenshots and callouts. It opens with F1 and sits next to the program, so you can open it on its own too.

At a glance

• Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit
• No installer: unpack and run
• No administrator rights needed
• English interface, manual in English and Russian
• 29.3 MB download
• Free