Desktop Display

The desktop display is the heart of O&O DeskInfo. This page describes how it is positioned, how it adapts to your screen, and how you change its appearance.

Display modes

Integrated with the desktop

This is the default. The information panel is attached to the desktop background: it is drawn in front of the wallpaper and behind the desktop icons. Open windows, the taskbar and your icons always stay on top, and mouse clicks pass through the panel to the desktop underneath.

O&O DeskInfo picks the right technique for your Windows version automatically:

• Standard mode — the window is parented to the desktop icon layer. Used on Windows 10 and on most Windows 11 systems.
• Fallback mode — the window is placed on the lowest layer, behind all other windows but in front of the wallpaper. Used on Windows 11 systems with the newer “raised desktop” composition model.

If Windows Explorer is restarted, the panel is automatically restored to its place on the desktop.

Switch the mode from the tray menu: View settings → Show integrated with the Desktop. Changing it rebuilds the display; the collected graph history is preserved.

Sliding window

With desktop integration switched off, the information appears in a small window with a colored tab button at the screen edge. Click the tab — or the tray icon — to slide the window in and out.

This mode unlocks four additional options that make no sense for a desktop-integrated panel:

Option	Where	Description
Always on top	View settings	Keeps the window above all other windows.
Show button on desktop	View settings	Shows or hides the tab button. With the button hidden, use the tray icon to toggle the window.
Background opacity	View settings	Opacity of the panel background: 100 %, 80 % or 40 %.
Button color	View settings	Color of the tab button: blue (default), white, black, red, green or orange.

The vertical position of the tab button can be dragged with the mouse and is remembered in ButtonYPosition.

Position

The panel can sit in any of the four screen corners. Choose one under Position in the tray menu:

• Left top
• Right top
• Left bottom
• Right bottom

In sliding-window mode the choice is reduced to Left and Right, because the window always slides in horizontally.

The default is Right top. The corresponding configuration setting is PanelPosition.

Distance from the screen edges

Config file

In desktop-integrated mode you can add a margin between the panel and the screen edges — useful if a taskbar, a dock or a wallpaper element is in the way. The four values are given in pixels:

<Settings>
  <TopMargin>40</TopMargin>
  <RightMargin>24</RightMargin>
  <BottomMargin>0</BottomMargin>
  <LeftMargin>0</LeftMargin>
</Settings>

Monitor selection

If more than one monitor is connected, the tray menu contains a Monitor submenu:

• All monitors — the information is displayed on every connected screen simultaneously. All screens share the same profile, position and appearance.
• Monitor 1, Monitor 2, … — the display appears on the selected monitor only. The primary monitor is marked accordingly. The numbering follows the monitor numbers Windows itself uses in its display settings.

Switching the monitor restarts the application so that it can be positioned correctly on the new screen. Connecting or disconnecting a monitor is detected at runtime and the menu is updated.

The corresponding configuration settings are Monitor and ShowOnAllMonitors.

note

Desktop integration requires the primary monitor to start at a non-negative X coordinate. If your monitors are arranged so that a screen lies to the left of the primary monitor (negative coordinates), Windows cannot map the panel onto the desktop background reliably. In that case rearrange the monitors in the Windows display settings, or use the sliding-window mode.

Text appearance

Text color

View settings → Text color offers:

• Automatically (default) — O&O DeskInfo evaluates the brightness of your wallpaper and chooses black text over bright backgrounds and white text over dark ones. The evaluation follows wallpaper changes, so a slideshow background stays readable.
• A fixed color: White (default fixed color), Light gray, Gray, Dark gray, Black, Red, Green or Blue.

Picking any fixed color switches the automatic adjustment off. Any other color can be set in the configuration file with TextColor; the menu then shows an additional Custom entry.

Font size

View settings → Font size offers three presets:

Entry	Size
Small	10 pt
Regular (default)	12 pt
Large	14 pt

Any other value can be set with TextSize in the configuration file. The menu then shows a Custom entry so you can see that a non-standard value is active.

Opacity of the display

View settings → Opacity of the display controls how transparent the whole information panel is: 100 %, 80 % (default) or 40 %. Lower values let the wallpaper show through more strongly — pleasant to look at, but harder to read on busy backgrounds.

Do not confuse this with Background opacity, which only affects the panel background of the sliding window.

Column layout

The information is distributed across up to four columns so that the panel stays compact instead of growing into a long vertical list.

Automatic balancing

By default O&O DeskInfo balances the columns using a weight-based algorithm:

• every label row and every drive entry counts as weight 1,
• a performance graph counts proportionally to its height (typically three to five times a label row),
• groups are never split, so related information stays together.

The result is a visually balanced panel without any manual adjustment. The behaviour is controlled by UseBalancedColumnDistribution.

When the columns cannot be made exactly equal, the alignment mode decides which column is allowed to be shorter — set with BalancedColumnAlignment:

Value	Behaviour	Recommended for
RightBound (default)	The leftmost column becomes shorter.	Right-aligned positions (Right top, Right bottom)
LeftBound	The rightmost column becomes shorter.	Left-aligned positions (Left top, Left bottom)

Manual column assignment

If you want full control, assign each information category to a fixed column in the profile editor or in the profile definition. See Display Profiles.

Interaction

The desktop display itself is click-through and cannot be clicked. All interaction happens through the tray icon:

Action	Result
Left-click the tray icon	Shows or hides the sliding window. No effect in desktop-integrated mode.
Double-click the tray icon	Opens the Windows Task Manager. Can be switched off with Launch Task Manager by double-clicking.
Right-click the tray icon	Opens the tray icon menu.
Hover over the tray icon	Shows a tooltip with the current CPU, RAM and network values.

In sliding-window mode the performance graphs are interactive: hovering over a graph shows a tooltip with current, minimum, maximum and average values.