Possible To Have Desktop Icons Profile Save Automatically?

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Ignotus

15 discussion posts

Hi, I just brought my Windows 10 PC out of sleep, and for some reason that I don't recall, I refreshed my desktop with F5. When I did this, all of my icons moved to the left side of the screen on my primary monitor. I do not have a current icons profile saved. Is there a way to somehow have DisplayFusion automatically save my icon layout periodically so I don't have to remember to do it manually? I checked into triggers tied to a time interval, but I only see the option for LOADING a profile; I see nothing for saving one. If I go to ADD ACTION>RUN FUNCTION, the only option for desktop icons is for LOADING a profile. I don't really care about how it is scheduled; it could be when the PC is put to sleep, brought out of sleep, at a specific time interval, whenever an icon is added/removed, etc. I could probably find some software somewhere specifically for this, but I thought I'd try using DisplayFusion since I already have it.

My setup:

May 8, 2017 • #1

Hi, you can solve your problem using two triggers. The first one will save desktop icons by using simple code

Code
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using System;
using System.Drawing;

public static class DisplayFusionFunction
{
    public static void Run(IntPtr windowHandle)
    {
        // Set your profile name or leave as is
        BFS.DisplayFusion.SaveDesktopIconsProfile("DesktopIconsProfile");
    }
}

as Run Function: Add New Scripted Function. As an event, you can specify "DisplayFusion Starts" or "Timer Interval" (for example, 3600sec or in the interval that you want). The second trigger will load the icons after the PC wakes up, as an event specify "System Wakes from Sleep" and in Run Function use Load Desktop Icons Profile.

P.S. From third-party software, I can advise Stardock Fences, I've been using it for quite some time.

May 8, 2017 (modified May 8, 2017) • #2

Ignotus

15 discussion posts

Thanks for the response! That works and is exactly what I was needing. I do not need to load the icon layout automatically; I'll just load the layout manually the next time that Windows decides to auto-arrange my icons. I just couldn't remember to save the layout periodically, so when they all got moved, I was not prepared. I didn't know that it would be that easy to set this up.

May 13, 2017 • #3

user_971

1 discussion post

Hi Pablo and everyone,

I'm a heavy user of DisplayFusion,
your solution was very helpful, but I need some more because my work routine is in three different offices, with three different monitor profile (1 - notebook monitor, 2 - notebook monitor + one external, 3 - notebook monitor + two external).

Can you kindly suggest a function that saves three different icon profile (it checks monitor profiles and saves icon profile accordingly) ?

And, if possible, can this function save more profile instead of overwrite a single profile (example: monitorprofile1_iconsave_1, monitorprofile1_iconsave_2, monitorprofile3_iconsave_3 etc.) ? It will be helpful to have 10 savings (one of each hour) that are overwritten on daily base or to have savings with date+time (with a method to automatically delete the older ones)

I ask for this because of umpredictable nature of windows 10: I do an intensive use of hibernation/resume moving from office to office, and often windows crashes icon layout; in some cases I found the iconprofile saved with this function already overwritten with windows wrong icon layout.

Thank you very much for a kind reply.

Jul 27, 2017 • #4