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Fences - STOP icons from auto-arranging

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Fences - STOP icons from auto-arranging

from WinCustomize Forums

I have the Sort Fence option set to none and yet every time I try to reposition an icon within a fence they don't stick where I want them. If I have a dozen icons within a fence and I want one or two icons to remain next to each other, it seems like every time I move one icon to where I want it to go, the others all change their order. They seem to want to be in a topdown order any time the fence has multiple columns. So, if I want to take an icon and place it next to another one, everything below it rearranges. It's almost like a puzzle.

Is there a way to position each icon in the order I want without the others moving about to try to maintain a fill pattern?

213,355 views 55 replies
Reply #51 from Stardock Forums Top

This was almost a dealbreaker for me during the trial, but I noticed a workaround that worked.

1) Create a Folder Portal fence (e.g. fence contents are based on a folder of shortcuts).

2) On the fence Sort By Date modified and in my case reverse, so newest shortcuts appear first.

Then you basically ensure your date modified on each shortcut corresponds to the order you want chronologically from new to old, i.e. anything you want to take to front you can open the shortcut's properties, type a space in Comment then delete it, then Apply, and the modify date will update to current date/time and take it to front (press F5 on the fence to refresh it).

 

Agree it's a strange omission, especially when they implemented drag and drop re-ordering.

Reply #52 from Stardock Forums Top

I completely agree with the desire to have icon control similar to the desktop and not like file explorer. I think those are fair analogies.

Does anyone know if Fences 4 has implemented this?

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Reply #53 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm keen to know still. As much as the sorting by date modified is one way, it's not ideal. One question I have about it though, is what does it do with "This PC" and Control Panel icons and such? Do they stay at the top like they should? Do they get reorganized by fences if the resolution changes? 

Reply #54 from Stardock Forums Top

So now it's May of 2023... it's been 13 years (started in 2010) since this "Feature" (Functionality) has been discussed (with pleadings), very, very disappointing... why Stardock doesn't develop a "100% Transparent Icon" (Invisible), with an option to populate a Fence with all Trasparent Icons (No Sorting) and allow the user to replace each or any of them individually & when the user deletes an Icon, Fences would replace it with the "Transparent Icon" ~ no effect to sorting / appearence!

Reply #55 from Stardock Forums Top

This may be an old post, but it looks like the right place to participate on this topic.

We're in 2026 by now, and I still can't find a way to make Fences to allow positioning of icons anywhere we want within a fence, without having the icons to both align to grid and to auto-arrange themselves.

I think that these are essential features that should have been existed from the beginning, and that it should work the same way as arranging icons on our Desktop, when either align-to-grid and/or auto-arranged is set to on or off - sometimes you just want to space out some icons, or to temporarily put a certain icon or more a little away from the reset for the group.

There's already a "Use spacing inside and outside of Fences groups" feature in the Layout management section which make Fences to integrate better with the Desktop layout. I think that there should also be options to both disable/enable align-to-grid and auto-arrange. And if you're already on it, perhaps this could be either a global and local feature, so one could have certain fences with a certain setting while another with a different one.