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Nexus Dock v12.2 Released!

March 22, 2012




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, blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, with thousands of different backgrounds freely available online, Nexus 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, Windows 7 and 8.

v12.2 is a monster release, with hundreds of changes and additions.

What's New? Highlighted Features:


  • Speed! Nexus rendering performance is now an order of magnitude faster. Animated icons render 20-30 times faster and the combination of magnify with other mouseover effects should now work well even on slow systems.


  • Smooth transitions when moving, adding or removing items in the dock.
  • Based on the existing Water Ripple effect, the new RainDrop effect turns the dock into a liquid surface where rain drops fall continuously, with a soothing matching audio. The frequency of the rain can be set and the audio turned on or off.
  • New Burn, Grayscale and Fireworks effects (Burn effect displayed below).

  • The dock can now reserve screen space on all monitors (previously only docks in the primary monitor of a multi-monitor system could prevent maximized windows from overlapping them).
  • Fixed incompatibility with some ObjectDock v2 themes.
  • Icon labels can now have a solid color background with optional outline and automatic colorization.
  • Optional icon drop shadows.


  • Dock activation hotkey can now act as a toggle: use once to show, again to hide.
  • An always-on-top dock can now be set to hide automatically when a window is maximized.
  • Color hot-track for particle effects (colorizes effect with the icon's dominant color).


  • You can now use an animated icon to customize the fish style of the Wanda widget.
  • Email Checker widget now supports checking Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts.


  • Restored the Weather.com (Weather Channel) feed.
  • Added 14 new weather icons for a more accurate weather visualization.
  • Clicking the weather widget now pops up the 5 day forecast in a separate dock.


  • New dock auto-hide animations: Fade Out, Fly Out, Burn, Flair and Implode.
  • Improved support for touch screens by adding settings to change the sensitivity of screen edge bumps.
  • Added work-around to a driver bug that caused Nexus not to operate properly on laptops with hybrid Intel/nVidia graphic chipsets.


Nexus Ultimate:


  • Folder, Desktop and Documents Shelf tabs can now be sorted by Name, Type, Date or Size.
  • Improved organization and functionality of the right-click context menus in the Shelf.
  • Sub-docks no longer extend onto reserved screen areas.
  • Added option to lock the Shelf and prevent it from being moved.
  • Collapsing the Shelf by clicking the label of the active tab behavior can now be disabled.
  • Colors of the 3D Frame around the icons in the Shelf can now be specified by the user.
  • Added alternative 'Fade In','Fly Out','Burn', 'Flair' and 'Expand' sub-dock opening animations.
  • Added customizable 'Launch' and 'Attention' effects to the Shelf.
  • In-Shelf docks can now be set to open horizontally as well as vertically.


  • ... and much more! Please see complete change log below...


Nexus v12.2 complete change log:


  • Updated German language file.
  • Updated Dutch language file.
  • Updated Italian language file.
  • Updated Russian language file.
  • Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file.
  • Updated Portuguese language file.
  • Added 'Launch Effect' and 'Attention Effect' sub-menus to the right click context menu of the Nexus control icon.
  • Changed the display of 'Dock Tiles' in the Themes tab of Nexus Preferences so more tiles are visible at one time.
  • Added ability to scroll the list of dock tiles using the mouse wheel.
  • Improved the icon rendering algorithm for mouseover dock effects, as icons with very high refresh rates would still occasionaly crop part of the effect on neighbor icons.
  • Added color hot-tracking to dock particle animation effects.
  • Also added 'Hide Windows Taskbar' setting to the Tasks tab in Preference.
  • Restored the Weather.
  • com feed by using the XML feed instead of the XOAP feed.
  • Added a 'Default' button to the Fluid Surface and Fluid Reflection setting dialogs, which resets the settings to default.
  • Magnification effect can now span a single icon.
  • Magnification Effect Settings dialog has been updated.
  • Fine tuned the icon reflection effect so it always starts at least 50% transparent regardless of the reflection size and increased the quality of the reflection itself.
  • Added optional icon drop shadows.
  • The labels of icons in the dock can now have an optional balloon background, which can be colorized by the user or set to colorize automatically based on the dominant color of the current dock background.
  • The dock background colorization setting, previously found in the Themes tab, now also appears in the Appearances tab for convenience and logical organization.
  • Improved the drawing performance by using PixelFormat32bppPARGB instead of PixelFormat32bppARGB (Pre-multiplied ARGB is faster than ARGB).
  • The tooltip of the Weather module now displays the source of the information (NOOA, Weather Channel, MSN, Google).
  • Added final bounce effect to the animation of a dock sliding from the screen edge.
  • The Launch effect animation now still plays even if the dock is set to hide automatically on launch.
  • When inserting an item into a tiled dock via drag & drop, the insertion point no longer is a blank tile.
  • Added 'raise' effect which plays when an item is added to the dock.
  • The image of the 'animated fish' style of the Wanda module can now be colorized.
  • Different images can now be used to customize the 'Animated fish' and 'Fortune cookie' styles of the Wanda module.
  • Added new 'Edge Bump Settings' button and dialog to the Behavior tab of Preferences.
  • The user can now set the distance from a screen edge that will still trigger an edge bump.This setting should be very helpful when using a touch screen.
  • Top screen edge bumps can now be optionally ignored if within the button area of a maximized window. Useful to minimize triggering an accidental edge bump when closing, restoring or minimizing a maximized window.
  • The auto-hide delay slider now displays the current delay in milliseconds.
  • The 'Always open folders as menus' setting has been moved to the Advanced Behavior settings dialog.
  • If the user specifies a edge bump as the activation method for the dock, this activation method overrides the default one, i.e.; a hidden dock attached to the top edge of the screen is usually made visible by bumping the top screen edge. If the user specifies another screen edge as the activation method, bumping the top screen edge will now do nothing.
  • Added 'Activation acts as a toggle (shows if hidden, hides if visible)' setting to the Behavior tab of Nexus Preferences.
  • Renamed 'Activate dock when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting to 'Popup dock when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' and moved it to the Advanced Behavior dialog.
  • The bounce effect at the end of the dock slide animation now automatically adjusts itself to make up for slow systems.
  • Added 'Auto-Hide for maximized applications' setting to the Position tab of Nexus Preferences. When enabled, a dock set to always on top will automatically hide when a window is maximized.
  • Added alternative 'Fade Out','Fly Out','Burn', 'Flair' and 'Implode' dock collapse and uncollapse animations o the Behavior tab of Nexus Preferences.
  • Added option to disable the uncollapse/unhide 'boing' effect.
  • Added a 'zoom out' effect to the deleted icon when you delete a dock item.
  • Moving items around the dock is now smoother.
  • The dock clock module tooltip now also displays the time.
  • The dock weather module tooltip now also displays current sky and weather conditions.
  • Backgrounds of dock icon labels can now be outlined.
  • Added alternative 'Fade In','Fly Out','Burn', 'Flair' and 'Expand' sub-dock opening animations.
  • Clicking the weather module icon now opens the weather forecast in a sub-dock.
  • Added three new weather icons for Windy, Freezing and Hot.
  • Added 'Burn' mouseover, launch and attention effect.
  • The Grayscale effect can now also be used as the Launch and Attention effects.
  • Magic, Teleport and Water effects are now persistent on mouseover, i.e.; the effect keeps playing while the mouse pointer is over the icon.
  • Improved weather descriptions of the MSN Weather feed.
  • Added new weather icons to complete the standard weather icon set.
  • Added 'reserve screen space' support to all monitors in a multi-monitor system.
  • Added new 'Fireworks' mouseover/launch/attention effect.
  • Added RainDrops effect. Based on the existing Water Ripple effect, RainDrops turns the dock into a liquid surface where rain drops fall continuously, with matching audio. The frequency of the rain can be set in the 'Water Ripple Settings' dialog and the audio can be turned on or off.
  • The fish style of the Wanda module can now be customized with an animated icon.
  • The Email Checker module now supports Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts again, i.e; any email account requiring a SSL encrypted connection.
  • Replaced the text boxes with sliders in the Wanda Settings panel.
  • Particle mouseover effects now render about 3 times faster.
  • Improved rendering speed on docks when combining the magnify effect with mouseover effects that extend beyond each icon (such as the particle effects, Swing, etc...).
  • Configuration settings for modules on a dock now appear always on top if the dock is also always on top.
  • The Update Manager can now install updated Language Packs when there is an update to the language file of the user's currently selected language.
  • If a Wanda cookie is set to display automatically after a certain amount of time, the cookie will now pop up next to a Wanda module in the dock (if any).
  • Modules can now be customized like other icons by dropping an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF file directly into them. Exceptions are the Recycler and Weather modules, and the fish style of Wanda is the only module that accepts an animated icon (PNG strip).
  • Memory usage is now monitored and a red warning dialog displayed if a memory leak is detected.
  • Nexus now remains visible under Windows 7's Aeropeek if 'Keep visible when pressing WIN+D (Show Desktop)' is enabled.
  • For locations in the United States, the Weather module now passes 'city','state' to the Google feed instead of 'city','country'.
  • Fixed an incompatibility with some ObjectDock v2 themes.
  • The dock was not properly re-sizing automatically when using proportional tiled themes and the dock was too big to fit on the allocated screen space.
  • The INI configuration files of 3rd party dock themes are now validated before being put on the list of available themes.
  • Fixed problem with certain 3rd party RocketDock themes where the authors had no idea what they were doing with the offsets. RocketDock was more forgiving, we weren't and this resulted in a dock displaying two overlapping backgrounds.
  • The label of a task button/icon did not revert to a window caption under grouped mode when only a single instance of that task was running.
  • Fixed major issue that broke sub-classing and caused Nexus to malfunction on systems with hybrid Intel/nVidia video cards.
  • Bounce effect was squishing the icon on the last bounce.
  • Fixed issue that could cause a dock Launch or Attention effect to become cropped.
  • Custom Email Checker animations were no longer working.
  • Dock icon reflections could extend beyond the dock with the bounce mouse over effect.
  • The application should no longer hang when forcing itself into the foreground if the current foreground window is hung.
  • When dropping an item into a dock using a dock mouseover effect combined with the Magnify effect, the dock would first shift the icons and only magnify afterwards.
  • The disable and enable time announcements option in the clock module's context menu was only being applied after a restart of the application or after going to Preferences and clicking Ok.
  • The Flat Magnify effect was scrambling icons.
  • Context menus of icons were not respecting the 'open sub-menus on mouseover' setting.
  • Changes on the shift keys pressed (CTRL or SHIFT) were not being reflected on drag & drop images until the image was moved.
  • Fixed bug in last beta which could result in half size icons being displayed.
  • Fixed bug in last beta which could result in dock icon labels failing to display.
  • Icon reflections on docks were not rendering properly when combining the Rock or Swing mouse over effects with the Magnify effect and the dock theme masked reflections to fit the tile (such as the KTEK-4D1 to KTEK-4D5 themes).
  • A dock set to collapse immediately on Startup with animations disabled would appear on the screen as an inactive dock.
  • When deleting an item on an Always On Top dock by dropping it into a Recycle Bin module, the confirmation dialog could appear behind the dock.
  • Fixed sudden icon size 'jolt' when moving an icon in a magnified dock to the right of the original position.
  • Flat Magnify was broken with some themes and worked fine with others.
  • When the new 'toggle activation' setting is enabled, the dock will only toggle collapse if it is already the foreground dock, otherwise it comes to the foreground first.
  • It was not possible to hide a dock while a running task was flashing/asking for attention, as the dock would immediately pop up again. The dock now only uncollapses automatically if a new window asks for attention.
  • Fixed reserve screen space problem with setting 'prevent maximized windows from overlaping the dock' and NOT setting 'Respect space reserved by other docks, toolbars...
  • Some of the particle dock mouseover effects could appear cropped if the attention effect was not set to 'Jump'.
  • Locking or Unlocking the Position of a floating dock from the Nexus context menu was not doing what it was supposed to do.
  • Fixed icon reflection not being cropped properly on the dock with Push effect.
  • Fixed several positioning issues related to games or applications that change the screen resolution.
  • "Safely Remove Hardware" Internal Command is no longer available on 64 bit systems, as it only works on 32 bit systems.
  • When dragging an item in a dock with a persistent mouseover effect, the mouseover effect would keep playing while the item was being dragged.
  • Sometimes a persitent mouseover effect on the dock would keep playing after launching an item.
  • Fixed dock rendering problems with mouseover effects combined with magnify when there was a large difference in size between a non-magnified and a fully magnified icon.
  • Fixed overlay 'leftovers' problem that could happen when using a theme such as Nx-Lawn on a dock with magnify + other combo as the mouse over effect.
  • The 'Disable animations for this module' and 'disable sounds for this module' settings were not doing anything.
  • Some of the settings set via a module settings panel invoked by right clicking on a module in the dock were not being applied immediately.
  • Fixed problem with Show Desktop (WIN+D) which could cause the Windows taskbar to disappear when the Desktop was being shown and the user clicked on the dock and then on the desktop.
  • A change in the Z-order of the dock made via Preferences was not being applied immediately.
  • Mouseover animations did not play on a collapsed dock.
  • Fixed rendering issue with the Expand dock open animation and docks with overlays.


Nexus Ultimate v12.2 complete change log:


  • Updated German language file.
  • Updated Dutch language file.
  • Updated Italian language file.
  • Updated Russian language file.
  • Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file.
  • Updated Portuguese language file.
  • Added 'Launch Effect' and 'Attention Effect' sub-menus to the right click context menu of the Nexus control icon.
  • The Shelf now obeys an auto-hide setting of 'Collapse the Shelf immediately after launching an application' when left clicking items in a Tasks or Tray tab. Same for a Sticky tab.
  • Added customizable 'Launch' and 'Attention' effects to the Shelf.
  • Moved the 'Shift icons to make room for new entry when dropping items into the shelf' setting from the Effects tab to the Advanced dialog of the Behavior tab in Shelf Properties.
  • Changed the display of 'Dock Tiles' in the Themes tab of the Dock Properties panel so more tiles are visible at one time.
  • Added ability to scroll the list of dock tiles using the mouse wheel.
  • Improved the icon rendering algorithm for mouseover dock effects, as icons with very high refresh rates would still occasionaly crop part of the effect on neighbor icons.
  • Added color hot-tracking to dock and Shelf particle animation effects.
  • Added 'Launch Effect' and 'Attention Effect' sub-menus to the right click context menu of the Shelf left mini-tab.
  • Also added 'Hide Windows Taskbar' setting to the Tasks tab in Preference.
  • Changed Tab and Shelf item and right click menus so that the main Shelf context menu (previously only available by right clicking the left mini-tab) is now available from these context menus as well.
  • Restored the Weather.com feed by using the XML feed instead of the XOAP feed.
  • Sub-docks no longer extend onto reserved screen areas.
  • Added a 'Default' button to the Fluid Surface and Fluid Reflection setting dialogs, which resets the settings to default.
  • Magnification effect can now span a single icon.
  • Magnification Effect Settings dialog has been updated.
  • Fine tuned the icon reflection effect so it always starts at least 50% transparent regardless of the reflection size and increased the quality of the reflection itself.
  • Added optional icon drop shadows.
  • The labels of icons in the dock can now have an optional balloon background, which can be colorized by the user or set to colorize automatically based on the dominant color of the current dock background.
  • The dock background colorization setting, previously found in the Themes tab of the Dock Properties dialog, now also appears in the Appearances tab for convenience and logical organization.
  • Improved the drawing performance by using PixelFormat32bppPARGB instead of PixelFormat32bppARGB (Pre-multiplied ARGB is faster than ARGB).
  • Re-organized the Shelf's context menus so that the Tabs menu is also accessible from everywhere.
  • Folder type tabs in the Shelf can now be sorted by Name, Type, Size or Date.
  • The tooltip of the Weather module now displays the source of the information (NOOA, Weather Channel, MSN, Google).
  • Added final bounce effect to the animation of a dock sliding from the screen edge.
  • The Launch effect animation now still plays even if the dock is set to hide automatically on launch.
  • Clicking on a sub-dock icon now also plays the Launch Effect animation for that icon.
  • When inserting an item into a tiled dock via drag & drop, the insertion point no longer is a blank tile.
  • Added 'raise' effect which plays when an item is added to the dock.
  • The image of the 'animated fish' style of the Wanda module can now be colorized.
  • Different images can now be used to customize the 'Animated fish' and 'Fortune cookie' styles of the Wanda module.
  • Added option to lock the Shelf and prevent it from being moved to the Behavior tab of the Shelf Properties dialog.
  • Added new 'Edge Bump Settings' button and dialog to the Behavior tab of the Dock and Shelf Properties dialogs.
  • The user can now set the distance from a screen edge that will still trigger an edge bump. This setting should be very helpful when using a touch screen.
  • Top screen edge bumps can now be optionally ignored if within the button area of a maximized window. Useful to minimize triggering an accidental edge bump when closing, restoring or minimizing a maximized window.
  • The Desktop and Documents Shelf tab types can now also be sorted by Name, Type, Date or Size.
  • Added 'Behavior' tab to the Dock Properties dialog of in-Shelf docks.
  • The auto-hide delay slider now displays the current delay in milliseconds.
  • 'Auto-Hide' and 'Collapse on Launch' are now independent Shelf settings, with the later setting appearing in the Advanced dialog of the Behavior tab in the Shelf Properties dialog.
  • The 'Always open folders as menus' setting has been moved for the Advanced dialog of the Behavior tab in the Dock and Shelf Properties dialogs.
  • The open In-Shelf Dock mouse over settings have been moved from the Advanced behavior dialog to it's own 'Sub-Docks' dialog.
  • If the user specifies a edge bump as the activation method for a dock, this activation method overrides the default one, i.e.; a hidden dock attached to the top edge of the screen is usually made visible by bumping the top screen edge. If the user specifies another screen edge as the activation method, bumping the top screen edge will now do nothing.
  • Added 'Activation acts as a toggle (shows if hidden, hides if visible)' setting to the Behavior tab of the dock and Shelf properties panels.
  • Renamed 'Activate dock when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting to 'Popup dock when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' and moved it to the Advanced Behavior dialog.
  • Added bounce effect to the end of Shelf uncollapse animation.
  • The bounce effect at the end of the Shelf uncollapse and the dock slide animations now automatically adjusts itself to make up for slow systems.
  • The Shelf collapse and uncollapse animations now accelerate and deccelerate.
  • The right mini-tab symbol is now flipped vertically if the Shelf is inverted.
  • By default, clicking the label of the active tab collapses an expanded Shelf. Added option to disable this behavior to the Shelf's Advanced Behavior Settings dialog.
  • Colors of the 3D Frame around the icons in the Shelf can now be specified in the Appearence tab of the Shelf Properties dialog.
  • Added 'Auto-Hide for maximized applications' setting to the Position tab of the Dock Properties dialog. When enabled, a dock set to always on top will automatically hide when a window is maximized.
  • Added alternative 'Fade Out','Fly Out','Burn', 'Flair' and 'Implode' dock collapse and uncollapse animations to the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties dialog.
  • Added option to disable the uncollapse/unhide 'boing' effect.
  • Added a 'zoom out' effect to the deleted icon when you delete a dock item.
  • Moving items around the dock is now smoother.
  • The dock clock module tooltip now also displays the time.
  • The dock weather module tooltip now also displays current sky and weather conditions.
  • Backgrounds of dock icon labels can now be outlined.
  • Added alternative 'Fade In','Fly Out','Burn', 'Flair' and 'Expand' sub-dock opening animations.
  • Clicking the weather module icon now opens the weather forecast in a sub-dock.
  • In-Shelf docks can now be set to open vertically or horizontally.
  • Added three new weather icons for Windy, Freezing and Hot.
  • The left mini-tab Prefs symbol is now automatically flipped vertically in inverted Shelves.
  • Added 'Burn' mouseover, launch and attention effect.
  • The Grayscale effect can now also be used as the Launch and Attention effects.
  • Magic, Teleport and Water effects are now persistent on mouseover, i.e.; the effect keeps playing while the mouse pointer is over the icon.
  • Improved weather descriptions of the MSN Weather feed.
  • Added new weather icons to complete the standard weather icon set.
  • Added 'reserve screen space' support to all monitors in a multi-monitor system.
  • Added 'raise' effect to the Shelf which plays when a new item is added.
  • Added optional icon drop shadows to icons in the Shelf.
  • Icons in the Shelf now smoothly move to occupy the space of a deleted icon.
  • Moving items around the Shelf is now more smooth too.
  • Added new 'Fireworks' mouseover/launch/attention effect.
  • Added RainDrops effect. Based on the existing Water Ripple effect, RainDrops turns a dock or shelf into a liquid surface where rain drops fall continuously, with matching audio. The frequency of the rain can be set in the 'Water Ripple Settings' dialog and the audio can be turned on or off.
  • The fish style of the Wanda module can now be customized with an animated icon.
  • The Email Checker module now supports Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts again, i.e.; any email account requiring a SSL encrypted connection.
  • Replaced the text boxes with sliders in the Wanda Settings panel.
  • Particle mouseover effects now render about 3 times faster.
  • Improved rendering speed on docks when combining the magnify effect with mouseover effects that extend beyond each icon (such as the particle effects, Swing, etc...).
  • Raindrop effect for the Shelf no longer plays if the Shelf is collapsed.
  • Configuration settings for modules on a dock now appear always on top if the dock is also always on top.
  • The Update Manager can now install updated Language Packs when there is an update to the language file of the user's currently selected language.
  • If a Wanda cookie is set to display automatically after a certain amount of time, the cookie will now pop up next to a Wanda module in the dock (if any).
  • Modules can now be customized like other icons by dropping an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF file directly into then. Exceptions are the Recycler and Weather modules, and the fish style of Wanda is the only module that accepts an animated icon (PNG strip).
  • Memory usage is now monitored and a red warning dialog displayed if a memory leak is detected.
  • The Shelf and docks now remain visible under Windows 7's Aeropeek if 'Keep visible when pressing WIN+D (Show Desktop)' is enabled for it.
  • Removed 'Normal linked to the Shelf' z-order option.
  • For locations in the United States, the Weather module now passes 'city,state' to the Google feed instead of 'city,country'.
  • Fixed an incompatibility with some ObjectDock v2 themes.
  • The dock was not properly re-sizing automatically when using proportional tiled themes and the dock was too big to fit on the allocated screen space.
  • The INI configuration files of 3rd party dock themes are now validated before being put on the list of available themes.
  • Fixed problem with certain 3rd party RocketDock themes where the authors had no idea what they were doing with the offsets. RocketDock was more forgiving, we weren't and this resulted in a dock displaying two overlapping backgrounds.
  • The label of a task button/icon did not revert to a window caption under grouped mode when only a single instance of that task was running.
  • Fixed major issue that broke sub-classing and caused Ultimate to malfunction on systems with hybrid Intel/nVidia video cards.
  • Bounce effect was squishing the icon on the last bounce.
  • Fixed issue that could cause a dock Launch or Attention effect to become cropped.
  • Creating a RAS connections tab in the Shelf could crash the application.
  • Sub-docks of 'always on bottom' docks were not obeying the parent's z-order.
  • The Locate button in the Dock & Shelves Management tab in Preferences would not work if the currently selected dock was previously disabled.
  • Custom Email Checker animations were no longer working.
  • Dock icon reflections could extend beyond the dock with the bounce mouse over effect.
  • The application should no longer hang when forcing itself into the foreground if the current foreground window is hung.
  • When dropping an item into a dock using a dock mouseover effect combined with the Magnify effect, the dock would first shift the icons and only magnify afterwards.
  • The disable and enable time announcements option in the clock module's context menu was only being applied after a restart of the application or after going to Preferences and clicking Ok.
  • The Flat Magnify effect was scrambling icons.
  • Customized tray icons could appear as fuzzy images if the source image was smaller than 128x128 pixels.
  • Context menus of icons were not respecting the 'open sub-menu on mouseover' setting.
  • Changes on the shift keys pressed (CTRL or SHIFT) were not being reflected on drag & drop images until the image was moved.
  • Fixed bug in last beta which could result in half size icons being displayed.
  • Fixed bug in last beta which could result in dock icon labels failing to display.
  • Icon reflections on docks were not rendering properly when combining the Rock or Swing mouse over effects with the Magnify effect and the dock theme masked reflections to fit the tile (such as the KTEK-4D1 to KTEK-4D5 themes).
  • Automatic repositioning of open sub-docks when dragging items over the parent dock was not working properly under all circumstances.
  • Fixed possible positioning problem with blur region when uncollapsing the shelf.
  • A dock set to collapse immediately on Startup with animations disabled would appear on the screen as an inactive dock.
  • When deleting an item on an Always On Top dock by dropping it into a Recycle Bin module, the confirmation dialog could appear behind the dock.
  • Fixed sudden icon size 'jolt' when moving an icon in a magnified dock to the right of the original position.
  • Flat Magnify was broken with some themes and worked fine with others.
  • Changing the tab type in the Tab Properties dialog had no effect.
  • Fixed issue where an horizontal sub-dock of an horizontal parent dock at the top of the screen could slightly overlap the parent dock.
  • When the new 'toggle activation' setting is enabled, the dock will only toggle collapse if it is already the foreground dock, otherwise it comes to the foreground first.
  • Centered horizontal sub-docks could appear partly off-screen.
  • It was not possible to hide a dock while a running task was flashing/asking for attention, as the dock would immediately pop up again. The dock now only uncollapses automatically if a new window asks for attention.
  • Fixed reserve screen space problem with setting 'prevent maximized windows from overlaping the dock/Shelf' and NOT setting 'Respect space reserved by other docks, toolbars...'.
  • It was not possible to copy an item right next to itself in the Shelf.
  • Some of the particle dock mouseover effects could appear cropped if the attention effect was not set to 'Jump'.
  • The Shelf preview in the Themes tab would appear empty if the first tab of the Shelf was not a Regular tab.
  • Minimum vertical and horizontal icon spacing for the Shelf has now been set to 10 pixels to prevent rendering problems.
  • Fixed several graphic glitches with the Shelf mouse over effects.
  • Locking or Unlocking the Position of a floating dock from the Nexus context menu was not doing what it was supposed to do.
  • Changing the Shelf's mouseover, attention or launch effect via the context menu while the Shelf was collapsed would display a fully expanded Shelf even though the Shelf remained collapsed.
  • Fixed icon reflection not being cropped properly on the dock with Push effect.
  • Fixed several positioning issues related to games or applications that change the screen resolution.
  • "Safely Remove Hardware" Internal Command is no longer available on 64 bit systems, as it only works on 32 bit systems.
  • When dragging an item in a dock with a persistent mouseover effect, the mouseover effect would keep playing while the item was being dragged.
  • Sometimes a persitent mouseover effect on the dock would keep playing after launching an item.
  • Fixed dock rendering problems with mouseover effects combined with magnify when there was a large difference in size between a non-magnified and a fully magnified icon.
  • Fixed overlay 'leftovers' problem that could happen when using a theme such as Nx-Lawn on a dock with magnify + other combo as the mouse over effect.
  • The 'Disable animations for this module' and 'disable sounds for this module' settings were not doing anything.
  • Some of the settings set via a module settings panel invoked by right clicking on a module in the dock were not being applied immediately.
  • Fixed problem with Show Desktop (WIN+D) which could cause the Windows taskbar to disappear when the Desktop was being shown and the user clicked on the dock or the Shelf and then on the desktop.
  • A change in the Z-order of a dock made via the Dock Properties dialog was not being applied immediately.
  • Mouseover animations did not play on a collapsed dock.
  • Fixed rendering issue with the Expand dock open animation and docks with overlays.

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July 27, 2022

v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!

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Happy Holidays 2021!

December 22, 2021

Once again and still in difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!

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Happy Holidays!

December 20, 2020

In this difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!

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Winstep Xtreme v20.10 Released!

October 28, 2020

v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!

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Nexus Dock v20.10 Released!

October 28, 2020

v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!

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Happy Holidays!

December 18, 2019

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep 20th Annniversary!

February 28, 2019

Winstep is celebrating 20 years in business with a fantastic, time-limited, price reduction all across the board! Enjoy it while it lasts!

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Winstep Xtreme v19.2 Released!

February 28, 2019

v19.2 is mainly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!

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Nexus Dock v19.2 Released!

February 28, 2019

v19.2 is mostly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!

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Happy Holidays!

December 17, 2018

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep Xtreme v18.12 Released!

December 17, 2018

Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks, Search Filters, multi monitor profiles and much more!

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Nexus Dock v18.12 Released!

December 17, 2018

Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks and Search Filters (Nexus Ultimate), multi monitor profiles and much more!

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Cyber Monday!

November 26, 2018

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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Black Friday!

November 23, 2018

Black Friday 2018 is upon us and Nexus Ultimate is 40% off.

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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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Nexus Dock v18.10 Released!

October 9, 2018

Icon colorization, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, context menu scaling and much more!

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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!

August 30, 2018

Major release featuring the new Drawers, support for multiple and vertical Shelves and much more!

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Nexus Dock v18.8 Released!

August 30, 2018

Major release featuring new colorization options, new Drawers and support for multiple and vertical Shelves (Nexus Ultimate) and much more!

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Winstep Xtreme v18.5 Released!

June 1, 2018

Major release featuring the ability to access docks directly from NextSTART, new Delete Effect with 22 different animations, alarm overlays and much more!

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Nexus Dock v18.5 Released!

June 1, 2018

Major release featuring new Delete Effect with many different animations, enhanced Media Player functionality and playlist handling, alarm overlays and much more!

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Winstep and the EU GDPR

May 25, 2018

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU).

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Winstep Xtreme v18.3 Released!

March 31, 2018

Major release with new alarm options, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!

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Nexus Dock v18.3 Released!

March 31, 2018

New alarm options, full dock keyboard support, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!

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Winstep Xtreme v18.1 Released!

January 20, 2018

New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!

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Nexus Dock v18.1 Released!

January 20, 2018

New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!

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Winstep Xtreme v17.12 Released!

December 28, 2017

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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Nexus Dock v17.12 Released!

December 28, 2017

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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Happy Holidays!

December 22, 2017

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Cyber Monday!

November 27, 2017

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

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Winstep Xtreme v17.1 Released!

January 27, 2017

New moon module, new sub-dock options, smooth Shelf scrolling and much more!

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Nexus Dock v17.1 Released!

January 27, 2017

Wallpaper hot-track smooth colorization transitions, new moon module and pop-up calendar (Nexus Ultimate), and much more!

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Happy Holidays!

December 23, 2016

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep Xtreme v16.12 Released!

December 8, 2016

New calendar module, high-quality voice packs in multiple languages, and much more!

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Nexus Dock v16.12 Released!

December 8, 2016

High-quality voice packs in multiple languages, Email Checker module now displays number of unread messages on the icon itself, and much more!

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Winstep Xtreme v16.9 Released!

September 30, 2016

v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed.

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Nexus Dock v16.9 Released!

September 30, 2016

v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed..

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Winstep Xtreme v16.6 Released!

June 27, 2016

New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to docks and the taskbar, and much more!

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Nexus Dock v16.6 Released!

June 27, 2016

New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to the dock, and much more!

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Winstep Xtreme v16.5 Released!

May 28, 2016

NextSTART taskbar high-DPI support, new colorization options and much more in this new release!

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Nexus Dock v16.5 Released!

May 28, 2016

New colorization options, fixed 3D dock backgrounds distortion at certain icon sizes, and much more!

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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

With Windows 10 just around the corner, many users have been wondering if Winstep applications (Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme) will work correctly with it.

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Winstep Xtreme v14.11 Released!

November 7, 2014

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

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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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Take back what is yours!

March 23, 2012

In an effort to force you into using Metro, Microsoft stripped the familiar Start Menu out of Windows 8. In the process it also stripped your ability to chose for yourself what is best for you.

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Winstep Xtreme 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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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

Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, and more...

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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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