Despirit

Having a lot of icons on your desktop can be quite distracting, and they can also block any backgrounds or animated wallpapers you may be using. Removing them altogether may not be an option, but there are ways to keep them accessible and unobtrusive.

Despirit is an open-source program that enables you to group multiple desktop shortcuts and only displays them when you place the mouse cursor over the main icon. It lacks customization options, but it is very intuitive.

To begin with, you need to right-click the tray icon and create a new Spirit, which is basically the desktop icon used to collect multiple shortcuts. To assign one or more shortcuts, simply drop them onto the Spirit.

Up to six shortcuts can be added to each collection and any item that exceeds this limit will simply replace an older one. To view the shortcuts, just place the mouse cursor over the main icon.

Despirit can be very helpful for users who need to have a lot of shortcuts on their desktop but wish to avoid clutter. A dozen icons can be organized into just two groups, and you can even change each Spirit’s default icon by dropping a PNG image file on top of it.

However, no other customization options are available. You cannot, for instance, change the icon’s transparency or dimensions, lock its position on your desktop or specify for how long the shortcuts should be displayed.

Also, there is no way to remove individual icons from each collection, which means you have to delete the Spirit if you need to get rid of a single item.

While it is not perfect, Despirit shows a lot of promise and can definitely help you keep your desktop clean. It is very easy to use, but it does lack a few important features at present.