An integrated workspace environment, Winstep Xtreme is a powerful suite of applications that merge incredible usability and performance with breathtaking eye candy.

Version 26.9 is first and foremost a major bug-fix and refinement release.

The last few versions of Winstep saw an unusually rapid pace of development, with many new and advanced features added in a relatively short period of time.

Modifying mature code that has been extensively tested over many years can expose previously unforeseen interactions and, inevitably, introduce regressions elsewhere.

Development of v26.9 therefore focused heavily on finding and eliminating those issues, improving reliability, reducing unnecessary background resource usage and polishing the new functionality introduced in recent releases. It also adds Dark Mode (Midnight), improved PWA support, new maintenance and troubleshooting tools, expanded keyboard navigation, tighter Shelf layouts, Windows 11-style taskbar thumbnail sizing, improved per-monitor DPI handling and several other usability enhancements. Please read the categorized complete change log below. Winstep Xtreme runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 7, 8.x, 10 and 11.

What's New? Highlighted Features:

• Major Bug Fix and Reliability Release.

Version 26.9 represents one of the most extensive bug-fixing and refinement passes Winstep has received in some time. A large part of the work went into addressing regressions and unforeseen interactions introduced while modifying long-established code to support the many advanced features added during the recent rapid development cycle.




Fixes cover task handling, UWP applications and PWAs, multi-monitor configurations, Explorer restarts, sub-docks and Grid Stacks, wallpaper handling, the system tray, resource cleanup, the built-in Exception Handler and many other areas. The goal of this release is not simply to add more features, but to consolidate the work of the previous releases and make the whole system more robust.



• Lower Background CPU Usage and More Reliable Task Handling.

A substantial amount of work went into eliminating unnecessary background activity and making task tracking more dependable, particularly under Windows 11.




Core Audio monitoring now uses device-change notifications instead of continuously enumerating audio devices, application information is cached more efficiently, unnecessary tray and task-list polling has been reduced, and several UWP cloak/uncloak handling problems have been corrected. Version 26.9 also adds a troubleshooting option for the Windows 11 CPU-reporting anomaly seen after sleep/resume and fixes task icons that could previously take up to ten seconds to appear or disappear in some configurations.



• Rock-Solid Multi-Monitor and Screen Configuration Handling.

Multi-monitor support received a substantial reliability pass in v26.9. Monitor profiles now switch more dependably as displays are connected, disconnected or rearranged, preserving not only object positions but also the enabled or disabled state of individual Docks, Shelves and other objects. This makes it possible, for example, to automatically enable an extra Dock when a second monitor is present, disable it when returning to a single-monitor setup, and restore it again when that display is reconnected.




Monitor and screen-resolution handling has also been hardened throughout the applications. Version 26.9 fixes stale monitor handles after low-power state changes, improves handling of monitor layouts that are not horizontally aligned, adds delayed profile reconciliation after startup and resume, and makes recovery from display configuration changes and Explorer restarts far more robust. It also includes additional per-monitor DPI fixes for mixed-scaling systems.



• New Dark Mode (Midnight).

A new Midnight variation of the Winstep user interface dark mode provides an even darker appearance for users who prefer a near-black interface.






• Anchored Tab Strip for Floating Shelves and Drawers.

Floating Shelves and Drawers can now keep their tab strip anchored in place while collapsing and expanding, instead of having the tabs move together with the body of the Shelf. Users who prefer the traditional behavior can leave the tabs unanchored, making the animation work exactly as before.




The new option gives floating Shelves and Drawers a cleaner, more natural collapse animation while preserving the existing behavior as a choice.



• Improved Progressive Web App Support.

PWA support introduced in recent versions has been further refined. Version 26.9 adds support for Vivaldi PWAs, a default PWA icon, correct application names for grouped PWA tasks, better distinction between normal Chromium browser windows and installed PWAs, and fixes PWA windows not minimizing back to their pinned dock shortcuts when Minimize to dock is enabled.






• New Clear Temporary Files Internal Command.

A new internal command can remove deletable files and folders from both the current user's temporary folder and the Windows temporary folder. These locations can accumulate significant amounts of unnecessary data over time, including log files continuously generated by components such as Microsoft Office Click-to-Run and temporary files left behind by applications and installers.




The command is deliberately conservative: cleanup is restricted to the known Windows and user temporary folders, it does not follow links outside those locations, and files that are in use, protected, or otherwise unsafe to remove are simply left untouched.

Since internal commands can be scheduled through the Alarm Manager, temporary-file cleanup can also be performed automatically at regular intervals, in which case the command runs silently.


• Expanded Keyboard Navigation.

Keyboard navigation has been extended to many Preferences lists that were previously primarily mouse-oriented, including task and thumbnail exclusions, icon customization, full-screen exclusions, system tray exclusions and customization, Active Connections, running applications, and Dock and Shelf management. Depending on the list, this includes navigation keys, Enter to edit, Delete to remove items, expandable groups and Shift-based range selection.






• More Network and System Information.

The Net Meter's Active Connections dialog can now display per-connection bandwidth usage and offers Small, Medium and Large text sizes. The network tray icon can also show Wi-Fi signal strength when Windows location privacy settings permit access to that information.






• All Language Files Updated.

Every language file supplied with Winstep has been updated for v26.9, bringing the latest interface text, settings and feature descriptions to all supported translations.





Available languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong), Chinese Traditional, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.


• Correct Italian Spoken Time.

The spoken-time system has been corrected for Italian so that hours and minutes are announced in the proper order and the correct time-of-day phrasing is used. This fixes several combinations that previously sounded unnatural or grammatically wrong to native Italian speakers.






• Native Windows 11 Taskbar Previews.

Taskbar live thumbnail previews now offer a second, optional animation style designed to more closely match the native Windows 11 behavior. The new Windows 11 style uses a fixed preview height and dynamically adjusts individual thumbnail widths, with faster, snappier transitions and a short delay when moving between task buttons to avoid distracting intermediate previews.




Users who prefer the traditional behavior can still select the original Vista/Windows 7-style animation, which uses a slower but smoother morphing transition between previews.


• More Control Over Temporary Grid Stacks.

Temporary Grid Stacks created when opening folders as Grid Stacks can now use their own shared Appearance, Effects and Theme settings. This is especially useful when the parent object uses transparency or other styling that would make a temporary Grid Stack overlapping the parent object difficult to read.




You can choose whether temporary Grid Stacks inherit the parent settings or use the shared profile, allowing all folder-based Grid Stacks to use a consistent, independently optimized appearance.


• More Dock, Shelf and Task Customization.

Grouped task icons can now use stacked icons, the existing numeric instance counter, or no indicator at all. Maximum horizontal and vertical dock icon spacing has been increased from 16 to 64 pixels, while the minimum horizontal Shelf icon spacing has been reduced from 10 pixels to just 2 pixels for much tighter layouts. Shelf multi-selection has also been improved by extending the selectable empty area between the resize regions and scroll controls, making it easier to drag-select icons without accidentally moving the Shelf. Folder menus can now also open on mouseover when the corresponding sub-dock mouseover option is enabled.






• Color-Matched Shelf Bodies for Individual Tabs.

On themes that support tab colorization, a new option can now extend the active tab's colorization to the Shelf body itself. As you switch tabs, the Shelf body automatically changes to match each tab's assigned color, creating a more cohesive and visually distinctive appearance.




The Shelf body follows the selected Hue Shift, Tint or Additive Tint colorization method and retains the theme's original appearance when active-tab colorization is disabled.



• Start Menu Organizer Updated.

The Start Menu Organizer included with Winstep Xtreme has been updated to version 2.1. The utility, which makes it easy to clean up and reorganize Windows Start menu shortcuts, now includes the new Dark Mode (Midnight) user interface mode together with fixes for multiple high-DPI display scaling issues.







• Many Other Features, Fixes and Refinements.

Version 26.9 also improves Alarm Manager date handling, adds a Launch once for multiple dropped files option, improves the Winstep Update Manager, improves Explorer restart recovery and multi-monitor behavior, adds new troubleshooting tools, and addresses many smaller usability and localization issues.

WorkShelf v26.9 complete change log:

New Features & Improvements

General

• Updated all language files.
• Updated WorkShelf User Guide.
• Improved the layout and visual presentation of the Winstep Update Manager.
• Added new Dark Mode (Midnight) UI mode.
• Added "Lock Wallpaper" setting to the Themes tab of Preferences.

Docks, Shelves & Drawers

• Renamed and moved the mouseover opening settings from the Sub-Docks dialog to the Behavior tab's More Options dialog to reflect that they also apply to Grid Stacks, Launch Pads, and folder menus.
• Folder shortcuts configured to open as menus in their Item Properties dialog now also open on mouseover when the corresponding option is enabled.
• Added an option to the Auto-Hide settings on the Behavior tab to keep the tab strip stationary when collapsing or expanding a floating Shelf or Drawer.
• Added a warning when enabling full-width spanning with a tile-based dock theme, explaining that the option requires a single continuous dock background.
• Increased the maximum horizontal and vertical dock icon spacing from 16 to 64 pixels.
• The Nexus and Insert Item submenus are now also available from the context menus of running applications in docks.
• Shelf tab hotkeys now respect the "Activation acts as a toggle" setting, allowing them to either toggle the Shelf open/closed or bring an already open Shelf to the foreground.
• Added shared Appearance, Effects and Theme settings for temporary Grid Stacks, with individual Shelves and Grid Stacks able to choose whether temporary Grid Stacks created from opening folders as Grid Stacks inherit the parent settings or use the shared settings.
• Made icon insertion animations in non-magnifying docks faster and more responsive.
• Reduced the minimum horizontal Shelf icon spacing from 10 pixels to 2 pixels, allowing much tighter icon layouts.
• Improved multi-selection on Shelves by extending the selectable empty area between the resize regions and scroll controls, making it easier to drag-select icons without accidentally moving the Shelf.
• Added a "Colorize Shelf Body with Active Tab Color" option for themes supporting tab colorization, allowing the Shelf body to follow the individual color assigned to the active tab when active-tab colorization is enabled.

Tasks & Window Management

• Improved CPU usage when updating the list of running applications by caching previously resolved information.
• Added new stacked-icons and no-indicator options for grouped task icons, in addition to the existing numeric instance counter.
• Added a troubleshooting option to force tasklist polling once per second when Windows shell notifications are delayed or unreliable.
• Added a Windows 11-style animation option for task window and menu bitmap file thumbnail previews, featuring a faster, snappier animation. The default is the Windows 11 style on Windows 11 and the Windows 7 style on earlier versions.
• Added Windows 11-style taskbar thumbnail sizing to the Windows 11 animation style, using a fixed preview height and dynamically adjusting thumbnail widths to better match the native Windows 11 behavior.

PWA Support

• Added support for Vivaldi PWAs.
• Added default PWA icon.

System Tray & Modules

• Optimized the audio tray icon to cache the active audio endpoint and use system notifications for device changes, eliminating unnecessary device enumeration every second.
• Added Wi-Fi signal strength display to the network tray icon when permitted by the Windows location privacy settings.
• Added per-connection bandwidth usage information to the Net Meter's Active Connections dialog.
• Added a text-size setting (Small, Medium or Large) to the Net Meter's Active Connections dialog.
• Updated the Restore Wallpaper internal command icon to display the wallpaper thumbnail inside a monitor for a more polished appearance.
• Optimized the rendering of histogram-style iconic modules, making it about 20% faster.

Alarm Manager

• Added support for US and ISO system date formats in Alarm Manager, including locale-independent date validation.

File Drag & Drop

• Added a "Launch once for multiple dropped files" option to the Item Properties dialog, allowing all files dropped onto an application shortcut to be passed together in a single launch instead of launching the application separately for each file.
• Added support for mouse wheel scrolling during internal drag-and-drop operations.

Maintenance & Troubleshooting

• Added a new Clear Temporary Files internal command to remove deletable files and folders from the current user's and Windows temporary folders.
• The new Clear Temporary Files internal command runs silently when executed automatically by the Alarm Manager.
• Added a new Test Exception Handler option to the Troubleshooting dialog for verifying the built-in exception handling and recovery system.
• Added a startup integrity check that detects corrupt or recursive dock, Shelf and Grid Stack relationships and offers to back up the current settings before running the Integrity Checker.
• Added a "Fix Windows 11 CPU Usage Reporting" option to Troubleshooting Options, restoring access to the SerializeTimerExpiration workaround after profiling confirmed that Windows 11 can again intermittently report inflated per-process CPU usage after sleep/resume.

Multi-Monitor, Performance & Capture

• Added a delayed monitor profile reconciliation check after startup and resume to recover from missed or incomplete display changes and restore significantly displaced or resized objects.
• Improved monitor enumeration to correctly handle edge cases such as cloned displays and to safeguard against unstable Windows system states when returning from low-power modes (Transactional State Safety).
• Reduced background CPU usage by optimizing the frequency of global hotkey and housekeeping checks without affecting responsiveness.
• Improved the Capture Desktop function when holding ALT to capture the current foreground window, allowing modern hardware-accelerated windows to be captured correctly.

Keyboard Navigation & Accessibility

• Added keyboard navigation support to the Task Exclusion, Window Thumbnail Exclusion, Icon Customization and Full Screen Exclusion lists.
• Added keyboard navigation support when selecting from the list of currently running applications.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the System Tray Exclusion lists, including keyboard-based Add and Remove operations.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the System Tray Icon Customization list, including keyboard control of expandable icon groups.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the Active Connections list, including Shift-based range selection.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the Docks and Shelves management list, including Enter to edit and Delete to remove the selected item.
• Added custom-drawn scrollbars to some interface elements for better visibility and consistency in UI Dark Modes.

Fixes

Themes & User Interface

• Fixed an issue where opening the Themes tab in first-run or factory-reset setups would delete the default dock's All Programs Grid Stack target, leaving the dock's shortcut non-functional (build 1895).
• Fixed an issue related to writing changes atomically where Shelves using individual non-global themes would revert to a generic theme after restarting (build 1894).
• Improved readability of red warning text in the User Interface Dark mode (Gray) theme.
• Fixed some message boxes appearing centered on the screen instead of on their parent dialog or window.
• Fixed an issue where canceling Preferences after applying a global theme failed to restore the individual themes of Shelves not using the global theme.
• Shelves, Drawers, Grid Stacks and Launch Pads no longer appear as black "blobs" if the associated theme does not exist or has been deleted. Instead they use the default OPENSTEP_EUI theme.

Docks, Shelves, Grid Stacks & Folder Menus

• Fixed an issue where a Shelf, Drawer, or Grid Stack could appear unresponsive to mouseovers while a folder menu was open.
• Fixed collapsed shelves being incorrectly resizable by dragging their edges, causing the shelf body to appear while remaining logically collapsed.
• Toggling the "Span the full screen width when docked" option no longer resets the docking screen edge.
• Fixed docks with automatically reduced icon sizes briefly "flashing back" to their original icon size when reset.
• Fixed sub-docks, Grid Stacks and folder menus unnecessarily closing and reopening when auto-drop down is enabled and the mouse is moved back over their parent icon.
• Fixed sub-docks sometimes jumping to an adjacent monitor when repositioned near a monitor edge.
• Fixed docks, sub-docks and Grid Stacks invoked from NextSTART sometimes appearing behind other windows instead of being brought to the foreground.
• Unchecking "Allow parent dock magnification when sub-docks are open" was not disabling parent dock magnification as intended.
• Fixed several issues related to how docks and shelves behave when "Launch applications with a double click instead of a single click" is enabled.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the dock to jerk when switching insertion points while dragging icons with magnification disabled.
• Hardened dock, Shelf and Grid Stack hierarchy routines against recursive parent relationships.
• Expanded the Dock Integrity Checker to detect and repair indirect recursive dock and Grid Stack relationships.
• Switching to a different Shelf tab during a drag-and-drop operation did not close any open Grid Stacks, sub-docks, or other pop-up objects belonging to the previous tab.
• Fixed painting issues when scrolling with the mouse wheel while dragging icons over a Shelf, Grid Stack, or Drawer.
• The "Disable Magnify Effect when drag & dropping items into the dock" setting in the Magnification Effect Settings dialog was not working as intended.
• Fixed the dragged icon image from Explorer sometimes remaining on screen after pressing ESC to cancel a drag-and-drop operation over a Shelf.
• Fixed manually expanded Shelf still collapsing automatically after pressing ESC to cancel a drag-and-drop operation over a Shelf.
• Fixed dragging application items from docks or regular Shelf tabs into Explorer folders incorrectly removing them from the source - external drops now copy by default, while holding Shift still moves them.
• Fixed an issue where launch, attention or delete effects could temporarily erase part of an adjacent Shelf icon when Mouseover Effect was set to None and very tight icon spacing was used.
• Fixed an issue that could make small Shelf icons difficult or nearly impossible to select when using very tight icon spacing.

Tasks, UWP Apps & PWAs

• Fixed normal Chromium-based browser windows (Chrome, Brave) being incorrectly detected as PWAs with per-user installations.
• Fixed grouped PWA task items displaying the browser name instead of the correct application name, such as YouTube.
• Fixed cloaked and uncloaked UWP window notifications sometimes being associated with the wrong window, preventing the task list from updating correctly.
• Improved handling of cloaked and uncloaked windows so UWP apps are added to or removed from the task list at the correct time.
• Fixed unresolved UWP app windows being temporarily added to the task list with a generic icon before their application identity was available.
• Fixed potential excessive tasklist polling when shell notifications were unavailable.
• Fixed task icons in docks taking up to ten seconds to appear or disappear under Windows 11 when Enable fast system tray refresh was enabled.
• Fixed a "The group or resource is not in the correct state to perform the requested operation" error when dropping multiple files onto UWP application shortcuts.
• Fixed PWA windows failing to minimize to their pinned PWA shortcuts even when Minimize to dock was enabled.
• Fixed icon retrieval failures for some files containing Unicode characters that could not be converted to ANSI using the current system code page.

Multi-Monitor & Reserved Screen Areas

• Fixed an issue that could cause multi-monitor profiles to be applied incorrectly on systems where the monitors were not horizontally aligned.
• Fixed stale monitor handles after returning from a low-power state causing incorrect task filtering per monitor when switching from grouped tasks to individual task icons until the application was restarted.
• Fixed an issue where restarting or crashing Explorer could cause reserved screen areas and appbars to be positioned incorrectly.
• The user-defined length of Shelves is now saved and restored as part of monitor profiles.
• Multi-Monitor profiles are now application-specific, preventing Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and WorkShelf from overwriting each other's monitor profiles.
• Added automatic migration of legacy monitor profiles to the new application-specific format while preserving existing profile data.
• Fixed an issue where backwards-compatibility checks for older monitor profiles could fail because the full Profiles folder path was not being used.
• Fixed Grid Stacks displaying a corrupted opening animation on secondary monitors using a different DPI scaling setting from the primary monitor.
• Fixed sub-menus incorrectly opening on an adjacent monitor when the parent menu was at the screen edge and the theme used a negative menu overlap offset.
• Fixed labels being cropped under slider controls on secondary monitors when the primary monitor DPI was higher.
• Fixed other minor per-monitor DPI issues, such as multi-line checkbox labels incorrectly wrapping when moved from a higher-DPI monitor to a lower-DPI one.

System Tray & Resource Usage

• Fixed the system tray timer continuing to run even after the last tray instance had been removed, causing unnecessary background polling and resource usage.
• Fixed occasional excessive idle CPU usage under Windows 11 by replacing continuous Core Audio device polling for the volume tray icon with device-change notifications.
• Fixed modules inside Grid Stacks or nested sub-docks being incorrectly detected as active despite their root dock, shelf or drawer being disabled, preventing unused resources from being properly released.

Alarm Manager & Localization

• Fixed incorrect font rendering in the Alarm Manager on systems using non-Western locales.
• A badly formatted date in the Edit Alarm dialog no longer blocks the Cancel and Today buttons.
• Fixed incorrect Italian spoken-time phrasing, hour/minute ordering, and time-of-day announcements.
• Fixed the default Disk Meter desktop module translating the Read, Write, Free and Temp labels twice, which could add already translated text to language files as new entries.

Modules, Item Properties & Wallpaper

• Fixed an issue where changing the module type in the Item Properties dialog did not properly restore the corresponding argument field, such as the drive list for Drive modules or the time zone for Clock modules.
• Fixed the Next Desktop Background internal command no longer working under Windows 11 by using the native Windows wallpaper slideshow API on Windows 8 and later.
• Fixed static wallpaper changes made through Windows Personalization no longer being detected under Windows 10.

Networking

• Improved GeoIP and HTTPS socket handling, including more reliable lookup-state tracking, timeout cleanup, and reconnection logic.
• Fixed an issue where Internet-dependent features could continue attempting network operations after an automatic connection attempt had failed.

Backup & Restore

• Voice and Sound theme folders were not being properly validated when restoring from a backup.

Exception Handler

• Fixed the built-in Exception Handler crashing while handling an exception when any non-standard user interface mode was enabled.
• Fixed the built-in Exception Handler incorrectly interpreting exception information, resulting in bogus nested exceptions and incorrect exception details being reported.

NextSTART v26.9 complete change log:

New Features & Improvements

General

• Updated all language files.
• Updated NextSTART User Guide.
• Improved the layout and visual presentation of the Winstep Update Manager.
• Added new "Dark Mode (Midnight)" UI mode.
• Added custom-drawn scrollbars to some interface elements for better visibility and consistency in UI Dark Modes.

Taskbar & Window Management

• Improved CPU usage when updating the list of running applications by caching previously resolved information.
• Added new stacked-icons and no-indicator options for grouped task icons, in addition to the existing numeric instance counter.
• Added a troubleshooting option to force tasklist polling once per second when Windows shell notifications are delayed or unreliable.
• Added a Windows 11-style animation option for task window and menu bitmap file thumbnail previews, featuring a faster, snappier animation. The default is the Windows 11 style on Windows 11 and the Windows 7 style on earlier versions.
• Improved taskbar live thumbnail previews by adding a short delay when switching between task buttons, preventing distracting intermediate previews while moving the pointer toward the intended button.
• Added Windows 11-style taskbar thumbnail sizing to the Windows 11 animation style, using a fixed preview height and dynamically adjusting thumbnail widths to better match the native Windows 11 behavior.

Quick Launch & WorkShelf Integration

• WorkShelf sub-docks can now also be accessed from NextSTART hotspots, Quick Launch buttons and menus. To add one, select it from the Add > Docks submenu (sub-docks will be marked as such).
• The NextSTART Quick Launch area now animates as it expands and collapses.
• Quick Launch items in the NextSTART taskbar can now be copied by holding Ctrl while dragging them to a new position.

PWA Support

• Added support for Vivaldi PWAs.
• Added default PWA icon.

System Tray, Network & Maintenance

• Optimized the audio tray icon to cache the active audio endpoint and use system notifications for device changes, eliminating unnecessary device enumeration every second.
• Added Wi-Fi signal strength display to the network tray icon when permitted by the Windows location privacy settings.
• Updated the Restore Wallpaper internal command icon to display the wallpaper thumbnail inside a monitor for a more polished appearance.
• Added a new Clear Temporary Files internal command to remove deletable files and folders from the current user's and Windows temporary folders.

Keyboard Navigation & Accessibility

• Added keyboard navigation support to the Task Exclusion, Window Thumbnail Exclusion, Icon Customization and Full Screen Exclusion lists.
• Added keyboard navigation support when selecting from the list of currently running applications.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the System Tray Exclusion lists, including keyboard-based Add and Remove operations.
• Added keyboard navigation support to the System Tray Icon Customization list, including keyboard control of expandable icon groups.
• Added Home, End, Left Arrow, Right Arrow and Enter navigation keys to the Menu Editor.

Multi-Monitor, Themes & Menus

• Added a delayed monitor profile reconciliation check after startup and resume to recover from missed or incomplete display changes and restore significantly displaced or resized objects.
• Added a new "MenuRetainThemeWhenDetached" theme setting allowing skinners to make detached sub-menus retain their original sub-menu theme.
• Added a global "Keep sub-menu theme when detached" setting to the Theme Options dialog in NextSTART Preferences.
• Improved monitor enumeration to correctly handle edge cases such as cloned displays and to safeguard against unstable Windows system states when returning from low-power modes (Transactional State Safety).
• Improved the Capture Desktop function when holding ALT to capture the current foreground window, allowing modern hardware-accelerated windows to be captured correctly.

Fixes

Tasks, UWP Apps & PWAs

• Fixed normal Chromium-based browser windows (Chrome, Brave) being incorrectly detected as PWAs with per-user installations.
• Fixed the icon of grouped PWA task instances not being displayed properly in the taskbar at icon sizes of 32x32 or smaller.
• Fixed grouped PWA task items displaying the browser name instead of the correct application name, such as YouTube.
• Fixed cloaked and uncloaked UWP window notifications sometimes being associated with the wrong window, preventing the task list from updating correctly.
• Improved handling of cloaked and uncloaked windows so UWP apps are added to or removed from the task list at the correct time.
• Fixed unresolved UWP app windows being temporarily added to the task list with a generic icon before their application identity was available.
• Fixed potential excessive tasklist polling when shell notifications were unavailable.

Multi-Monitor, Appbars & Per-Monitor DPI

• Fixed an issue that could cause multi-monitor profiles to be applied incorrectly on systems where the monitors were not horizontally aligned.
• Fixed the NextSTART taskbar sometimes not being properly repositioned when reserved screen areas changed.
• Fixed stale monitor handles after returning from a low-power state causing incorrect task filtering per monitor when switching from grouped tasks to individual task icons until the application was restarted.
• Fixed an issue where restarting or crashing Explorer could cause reserved screen areas and appbars to be positioned incorrectly.
• Fixed sub-menus incorrectly opening on an adjacent monitor when the parent menu was at the screen edge and the theme used a negative menu overlap offset.
• Fixed labels being cropped under slider controls on secondary monitors when the primary monitor DPI was higher.
• Fixed other minor per-monitor DPI issues, such as multi-line checkbox labels incorrectly wrapping when moved from a higher-DPI monitor to a lower-DPI one.
• Multi-Monitor profiles are now application-specific, preventing Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and WorkShelf from overwriting each other's monitor profiles.
• Added automatic migration of legacy monitor profiles to the new application-specific format while preserving existing profile data.
• Fixed an issue where backwards-compatibility checks for older monitor profiles could fail because the full Profiles folder path was not being used.

System Tray & Resource Usage

• Fixed the system tray timer continuing to run even after the last tray instance had been removed, causing unnecessary background polling and resource usage.
• Fixed occasional excessive idle CPU usage under Windows 11 by replacing continuous Core Audio device polling for the volume tray icon with device-change notifications.

Windows, Wallpaper & User Interface

• Improved readability of red warning text in the User Interface Dark mode (Gray) theme.
• Fixed the Next Desktop Background internal command no longer working under Windows 11 by using the native Windows wallpaper slideshow API on Windows 8 and later.
• Fixed static wallpaper changes made through Windows Personalization no longer being detected under Windows 10.
• Fixed icon retrieval failures for some files containing Unicode characters that could not be converted to ANSI using the current system code page.

Exception Handler

• Fixed the built-in Exception Handler crashing while handling an exception when any non-standard user interface mode was enabled.
• Fixed the built-in Exception Handler incorrectly interpreting exception information, resulting in bogus nested exceptions and incorrect exception details being reported.

Start Menu Organizer v2.1 complete change log:

New Features & Improvements

User Interface

• Added Dark Mode (Midnight) user interface mode.

Fixes

High-DPI Display Scaling

• Fixed multiple issues related to high-DPI display scaling.