Using DeskPins

Working with DeskPins

While it is running, DeskPins will place an icon on the taskbar notification area (systray). You can click on it to enter Pin mode, or right-click on it to display the Tray icon menu. You can also use Hotkeys to perform certain actions.

Pin indicator

When a window is pinned, a small pin icon is placed on its caption, next to the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, as a reminder. You can click on it to remove it and make the pinned window normal again (non-topmost). Closing DeskPins will also remove all pins currently in use.

You can safely minimize a pinned window to temporarily make room on the screen for other programs. When you restore it, the pin will still be there and the window will still be top-most.

Closing a pinned window (via the X button or Alt-F4) will automatically free the associated pin.

You can find out how many pins are currently in use by right-clicking on the DeskPins tray icon and selecting the "About..." command. The About dialog displays the number of active pins using a bold font.

Window ownership

An application can have many windows. Some of them (for example, dialog boxes or tool windows) are usually owned by another window, called the owner window. This means that they are always shown on top of their owner. Since it doesn't make much sense to pin an owned window by itself, DeskPins will always check if the window you are trying to pin has an owner and pin that instead. To see this in action, open Notepad and bring up the About dialog from the Help menu. If you try to pin the About dialog, the pin will be placed on the Notepad window. Of course, pinning an owner will also make all its owned windows topmost.