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Nexus Dock v11.2 Released!

March 14, 2011




The Winstep Nexus dock is a FREE, dock for Windows. Every feature you’d expect from a dock, including widgets, mouse-over effects, skins, drag-and-drop, and many others not available in most other docks, such as live icon reflections, in-dock system tray, Vista Blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, Nexus has thousands of backgrounds freely available online and is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.



Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and Windows 7.

Supported Languages


Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Farsi (Persian), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brasil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish.

Would you like to receive a FREE Winstep Nexus Ultimate license key and have your name credited? You can by translating Nexus into a language not listed above! Please click here for more information.


Nexus v11.2 Changelog:


  • Added Finnish language file.
  • Added Indonesian language file.
  • Updated Polish language file.
  • Updated French language file.
  • Updated Farsi language file.
  • Updated German language file.
  • Updated Croatian language file.
  • Added support for the Y'z Dock format.
  • Non-square icon images and document thumbnails are now displayed with the proper aspect ratio.
  • Added an automatic retry after 30 seconds if Weather.
  • com returns an 'unknown error' when polling weather data.
  • URL files (such as shortcuts to Steam games) now show the correct icons.
  • The 'Delete Item' explosion animation is now smoother and twice as fast.
  • Glass blur for semi-transparent backgrounds on Vista and 7 is now enabled by default.
  • Moved dock's 'Lock Position' Nexus menu setting to the 'Screen Position' sub-menu.
  • Changed UI background color so buttons no longer have ugly white border under Vista/7.
  • Added support for the new NOOA Weather module METAR URL.
  • Besides the already existing right-click option, you can now also customize the image displayed by a system tray expand icon by dropping an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF file into it.
  • Languages in the About tab of Preferences are now sorted in Alphabetical order.
  • Set the Tab order of all dialogs.
  • It's now possible to 'Browse', via the right click context menu, the contents of virtual folders in Internal Commands (e.g.; My Computer).
  • Added support for the new Help system.
  • You can now drag files over taskbar window thumbnails - after half a second the associated window is restored and brought to the foreground.
  • Added support for RocketDock skins with negative margin coordinates.
  • Re-organized the Advanced dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences.
  • Added a 'Thumbnail File Types' button to the Advanced Settings dialog from where you can set which document, video and image files generate thumbnails.
  • Changed the default clock and recycler module images so they are no longer NeXT based.
  • Improved usability of task window thumbnails in the dock.
  • Added troubleshoot warning that pops up if Comctl32.ocx is not installed correctly.
  • Optimized handling of RocketDock backgrounds with negative coordinates.
  • Theme wallpapers that are not set to tile are now automatically set to stretch.
  • Task grouping is now turned on by default.
  • Edge bump activation when the dock is visible is now turned off by default.
  • Nexus would corrupt memory and crash if it failed to retrieve the configuration settings of a 3rd party dock theme.
  • It was impossible to use system tray popups if the dock popup delay was set to 0 ms.
  • The dock clock label displayed the date with the month and day reversed.
  • A hidden taskbar was being restored with the auto-hide status on.
  • The grouped tasks menu was sometimes displaying the wrong icon for running applications.
  • The 'Exit' button in Preferences was not being translated when switching languages.
  • If the dock was set to 100% transparent with opaque icons and the dock background skin was already semi-transparent, mouse movement over the dock and drag & drop operations could become erratic.
  • Selecting the first monitor in the Monitors right-click menu was not docking a dock to the selected monitor but instead toggled the dock position lock.
  • Application was not being high DPI virtualized on Vista/7 with high DPI (150%) when starting up.
  • Fixed crash when mousing over a module if the current mouse over effect was 'Sonic boom' and the modules icon cache had been disabled in Performance Settings.
  • Customized system tray expand buttons images were not being shown unless the dock was also set to display the currently running applications.
  • Fixed some major issues with high DPI virtualization on 7 and Vista.
  • The Effect 'Settings' button was sometimes enabled when it should not be.
  • Editing a virtual shell folder with the Item Properties dialog would break the ability to browse it's contents via the context menu.
  • Under XP non-square image and document thumbnails displayed white borders.
  • Hotkeys were being activated even if the Shift key combination wasn't an exact match (for instance, CTRL+1 would also activate if the user pressed CTRL+SHIFT+1).
  • When moving a dock from one quadrant of the screen to another, so that the background would flip or mirror, under Vista/7 the 'glass' region wouldn't always update to overlap the new background.
  • Added missing icon to Weather.com's icon set.
  • Fixed some minor issues with the size and position of the 'number of instances' text that overlaps the icons of running applications in groupped mode.
  • Windows preview thumbnails sometimes lost their 'Always on top' status just before Aero Peek, which could cause windows to overlap the thumbnails.
  • Groupped task icons could sometimes not display the number of running instances.
  • Fixed ugly system tray icon.
  • Since beta 1, Nexus was crashing after displaying the uninstall survey.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Nexus to stall for a while after installing a new font if another application was not responding to broadcasted messages.
  • Fixed bug that could cause icons on vertical magnifying docks to appear cropped.

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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Cyber Monday 2018 is here and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off for the next 24 hours. So, will you take the final chance to bag a deal?

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November 23, 2018

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Winstep Xtreme v18.10 Released!

October 9, 2018

Icon colorization, center icons in Shelves, Drawer resizing, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, menu scaling and much more!

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October 9, 2018

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Price Increase Announcement

October 7, 2018

After nearly 20 years providing the best products at competitive prices, Winstep is increasing the prices of all its applications for the first time - just to make up (barely) for inflation.

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Winstep Xtreme v18.8 Released!

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March 31, 2018

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Winstep Xtreme v18.1 Released!

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A bit late for Christmas but still not too late, v17.2 is here. Many Windows 10 related additions and fixes and much more!

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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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November 27, 2017

Cyber Monday 2017 is upon us and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off.

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December 23, 2016

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December 8, 2016

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September 30, 2016

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Nexus Dock v16.9 Released!

September 30, 2016

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Winstep Xtreme v16.6 Released!

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Nexus Dock v16.6 Released!

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May 28, 2016

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Winstep Xtreme v16.3 Released!

March 10, 2016

Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.

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Nexus Dock v16.3 Released!

March 10, 2016

Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.

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Winstep Xtreme v16.2 Released!

February 11, 2016

New battery module, clock alarms, 10 amazing new mouse-over, launch and attention effects and much more in this new release!

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Nexus Dock v16.2 Released!

February 11, 2016

Minimize windows to the dock, new internal commands, performance improvements and much more in this release!

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Winstep Xtreme v15.9 Released!

September 29, 2015

High DPI compatibility, Language Bar, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this new release!

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Nexus Dock v15.9 Released!

September 29, 2015

High DPI compatibility, combined dock shortcuts with running applications, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this release!

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Winstep Xtreme v15.7 Released!

July 27, 2015

Winstep Xtreme is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!

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Nexus Dock v15.7 Released!

July 27, 2015

Nexus is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!

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Windows 10 and Winstep applications

June 27, 2015

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Winstep Xtreme v14.11 Released!

November 7, 2014

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Nexus Dock v14.11 Released!

November 7, 2014

Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!

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March 23, 2012

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This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!

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Nexus Dock v12.2 Released!

March 22, 2012

This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!

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Winstep Xtreme v11.10 Released!

November 18, 2011

Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, new Tray tab in Preferences, and more...

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Nexus Dock v11.10 Released!

November 18, 2011

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Weather feed down!

November 6, 2011

Weather module not working? Find out why and what is being done about it.

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Winstep Xtreme v11.6 Released!

July 6, 2011

Maintenance release of Winstep Xtreme.

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Nexus Dock v11.6 Released!

July 6, 2011

Maintenance release of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.

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New Winstep Theme: DarkTech

June 24, 2011

Brought to you by the Winstep design team - more in-house themes currently in the pipeline.

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Winstep Xtreme v11.5 Released!

June 23, 2011

System tray icon customization, ability to mix mouseover effects, support for animated icons, and much more!

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Nexus Dock v11.5 Released!

June 20, 2011

Dock mouseover effects can now be combined with magnify effect, support for animated icons, and much more!

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Winstep Xtreme v11.2 Released!

March 14, 2011

New release featuring increased support for Microsoft's High DPI virtualization technology, and much more!

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Nexus Dock v11.2 Released!

March 14, 2011

New release featuring increased support for backgrounds of 3rd party docks, preserving aspect ratio of image thumbnails, and much more!

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Start Menu Organizer v1.5 Released!

March 14, 2011

New release adding more languages and increasing compatibility with 64 bit versions of Windows!

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Winstep Xtreme v10.9 Released!

October 14, 2010

Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, five new menu opening animations, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability on docks, horizontal sub-docks, and much more!

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Nexus Dock v10.9 Released!

October 8, 2010

Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability, and much more!

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Nexus featured at Download.com!

October 8, 2010

Nexus featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com!

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Start Menu Organizer v1.4 Released!

August 9, 2010

Version 1.4 fixes an issue in which the Pro version of the program could stop when expanding the Administrative Tools group and adds support for 23 languages.

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Winstep Xtreme featured at Download.com!

July 18, 2010

Winstep Xtreme has been featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com, not once, but twice!

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Winstep Xtreme v10.6 Final Released!

July 13, 2010

Roughly 1 year in the making, the official upgrade to Winstep Xtreme v9.5 is finally here!

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Nexus Dock v10.6 Released!

July 13, 2010

Maintenance release of our free popular Winstep Nexus dock.

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Winstep announces strategic alliance with Proxma AG!

July 13, 2010

Proxma AG will market Winstep products in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

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Start Menu Organizer v1.3 Released!

July 2, 2010

New version of the Winstep Start Menu Organizer featuring support for even more languages.

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Welcome to our new web site!

June 15, 2010

The Winstep web site gets a brand new face to match the quality of our products.

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