Fences 6.46 Release Feedback

from Stardock Forums

With the Fences 6.46 release, we are creating this thread so that users can report any observed issues.  

Obtaining the product

Object Desktop members can get the release from within Object Desktop Manager 

Individual purchases (as well as Object Desktop Members) can also be obtained from your account page: https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products

For guest check-out purchase (no account), from this link: http://www.stardock.com/support/productkeyretrieval

Reporting an issue

Please include the following for anything found:

  • Exact Windows version \ build (winver.exe)

  • Detailed steps to recreate the issue seen

  • Screenshots and videos are very helpful.  Videos can be uploaded to a cloud drive service (GoogleDrive, DropBox, OneDrive, YouTube), with a shared link included in your post.  Images can be copied and pasted directly into a post.

  • If there are specific apps that the app does not work (well) with, please note what apps and their exact versions.  If any app is not common, a link to a trial version would be appreciated.

fences
1,512 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Fences 6.46 Changelog (Released 4/27/2026)

4/27/2026

Version

6.4.6.1 (6.46)

Changes

  • Critical Fixes

    • Fixed a layout issue affecting some users with v6.44.

  • QOL Improvements

    • Fine-tuning improvements to multi-mon handling system, ensuring icons & groups stay put as you switch between different monitor configurations.

    • Improved startup responsiveness for slow loading network-drive based Folder Portals.

    • Improved accessibility of titlebar style options in Customization pane.

    • Improved ease of undocking tabs from a tab group.

    • Improved DPI support up to 400% and improved 250%-400% visuals.

    • Improved configuration of icon tinting.

    • Added option to hide folder icon on Folder Portal titlebars.

    • Added menu item for adjusting spacing.

  • Fixes 

    • Resolves configuration window conflict when removing Peek icon from the taskbar

    • Fixed: Peek would show a black background when “blur background” was disabled.

    • Fixed: Settings dialog might freeze when disabling "Show in Taskbar" in Peek tab.

    • Fixed: Custom per-group title fonts & title font colors would not apply to tabs.

    • Fixed: Original folder title is now not overwritten in registry when navigating within Folder Portals.

    • Fixed: Issue with scrollbar reappearing after undocking a tab.

    • Fixed: a couple minor issues with the previous update [internal update]

    • Fixed: Scrollbars in "List" style folder portals would appear upon mouseover of rolled up groups, even when "click to toggle rollup" is enabled. 

    • Fixed: Resolved issue where if all icons & groups were located on secondary monitor, under certain circumstances they could revert to the primary monitor after monitor went to sleep

    • Fixed: Resolved issue with inconsistent minimum size setting with multi-monitors.

    • Fixed: Snapping issue related to multi-mon

    • Fixed: Issue where group orderings could shuffle during multi-mon change.

    • Fixed: Issue where loose icons could change monitors during multi-mon change.

  • Other

    • Updated localization strings.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Known issues

While we appreciate all feedback, please remember that we offer no official support for beta \ preview \ developer channel versions of Windows. If you report issues while in any of those early release channels, you should not expect them to be addressed unless it still exists in a retail version of Windows.

  • tbd
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

***Reserved***

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I have recently changed to using a single 50" TV instead of my former dual 24" monitors. At night I surn off the TV but the PC stays fully running. In the morning I turn the TV on & some but not all of my fences have the icons squashed together or some overlap each other. Pulling the edge of each fence out of expand it corrects it but whether I leave it too wide or revert to normal I get the same scenario in next time I power off the TV. Hope there's an easy fix. Your thoughts..............

 

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Quoting steve161, reply 3994213

I have recently changed to using a single 50" TV instead of my former dual 24" monitors. At night I surn off the TV but the PC stays fully running. In the morning I turn the TV on & some but not all of my fences have the icons squashed together or some overlap each other. Pulling the edge of each fence out of expand it corrects it but whether I leave it too wide or revert to normal I get the same scenario in next time I power off the TV. Hope there's an easy fix. Your thoughts..............

End of steve161's quote

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having issues. If you just restart Explorer.exe, does the issue resolved itself?

Thank you,

Basj,

Stardock Community  Assistant.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm not sure if it's okay to post general feedback here rather than a bug report, but I have a suggestion regarding the UI.

It would be great to have an option to invert the behavior of active tab color for the "Segmented" Tab Style under Personalization (i.e., making the active tab's title background dark and the inactive tabs' backgrounds light).

Currently, the active tab background in the Segmented style is displayed in a light color, which contradicts the behavior of all other Fences.

Particularly, when switching from the "Rounded" style to the "Segmented" style, this opposite visual behavior is quite confusing. Adding a toggle to match the behavior of other styles would greatly improve the user experience.

Thank you for your time and for making a great product!

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Quoting cibepax535, reply 3994777

I'm not sure if it's okay to post general feedback here rather than a bug report, but I have a suggestion regarding the UI.

It would be great to have an option to invert the behavior of active tab color for the "Segmented" Tab Style under Personalization (i.e., making the active tab's title background dark and the inactive tabs' backgrounds light).

Currently, the active tab background in the Segmented style is displayed in a light color, which contradicts the behavior of all other Fences.

Particularly, when switching from the "Rounded" style to the "Segmented" style, this opposite visual behavior is quite confusing. Adding a toggle to match the behavior of other styles would greatly improve the user experience.

Thank you for your time and for making a great product!

End of cibepax535's quote

I completely agree, the current behavior feels inconsistent, and I would also love to see this added as an option in the settings.

I have a few pieces of general feedback as well:

Peek Hotkey & Rollup Fences: It would be great to have a setting where Rollup Fences are automatically revealed when bringing up Fences using the Peek hotkey. Currently, even when Fences are shown via the hotkey, Rollup Fences remain collapsed. Having to hover the mouse over them to see the contents decreases productivity, which ultimately makes me stop using the Rollup feature entirely.

Hide's Auto-hide Timing: For the Automatically hide icons when desktop is not in use setting under Hide, it would be very helpful if users could customize the delay time before the icons are hidden.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Quoting cibepax535, reply 3994777

I'm not sure if it's okay to post general feedback here rather than a bug report, but I have a suggestion regarding the UI.

It would be great to have an option to invert the behavior of active tab color for the "Segmented" Tab Style under Personalization (i.e., making the active tab's title background dark and the inactive tabs' backgrounds light).

Currently, the active tab background in the Segmented style is displayed in a light color, which contradicts the behavior of all other Fences.

Particularly, when switching from the "Rounded" style to the "Segmented" style, this opposite visual behavior is quite confusing. Adding a toggle to match the behavior of other styles would greatly improve the user experience.

Thank you for your time and for making a great product!

End of cibepax535's quote
Quoting fowix10906, reply 3995249

I completely agree, the current behavior feels inconsistent, and I would also love to see this added as an option in the settings.

I have a few pieces of general feedback as well:

Peek Hotkey & Rollup Fences: It would be great to have a setting where Rollup Fences are automatically revealed when bringing up Fences using the Peek hotkey. Currently, even when Fences are shown via the hotkey, Rollup Fences remain collapsed. Having to hover the mouse over them to see the contents decreases productivity, which ultimately makes me stop using the Rollup feature entirely.

Hide's Auto-hide Timing: For the Automatically hide icons when desktop is not in use setting under Hide, it would be very helpful if users could customize the delay time before the icons are hidden.

End of fowix10906's quote

Hello,

I have forwarded your requests to the Stardock Support Team for their review and recommendations. We really do appreciate your feedback, Thanks

 

Basj,

Stardock Community  Assistant.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Subject: Fences 6.46 - reproducible system freezes tied to explorer.exe, confirmed via Clean Boot test

Hi all,

I've spent the past two weeks tracking down a recurring system freeze on my Windows 11 Pro machine, and the evidence now points fairly specifically at Fences. Posting here in case anyone else has seen this, or Stardock support can help.

Symptom Keyboard input (typing, Backspace/Delete, Enter, Ctrl+V) intermittently stalls or queues for anywhere from a few seconds to over five minutes. Input isn't lost, it's delayed - it eventually "catches up" all at once, often garbled because I've already started retyping. Mouse input is unaffected throughout. Not confined to one app; I've seen it in browser tabs, code editors, and Windows' own UI.

What I've found

  • Confirmed via Process Explorer that Fences injects FencesMenu64.dll, DesktopDock64.dll, and SdAppServices_x64.dll directly into explorer.exe.
  • During freeze episodes, explorer.exe shows sharp CPU spikes (repeatedly 40 to 90 percent, one instance over 180 percent on a 16 core system) and its thread count jumps abruptly, sometimes climbing steadily and staying elevated for 5+ minutes rather than settling back down.
  • System-wide Interrupts/sec and Context Switches/sec spike at the same moments, with one episode peaking at 352,000 interrupts/sec (normal baseline on this machine is roughly 15,000 to 30,000).
  • Autoruns shows several of Fences' own registered entries (StardockFencesHotkeySupport, StardockFencesStartup, and an Explorer SharedTaskScheduler entry referencing FencesShellExt.exe) pointing to files that no longer exist ("File not found"). This is on a clean, current install (6.46), not a leftover from an old version.
  • I also intermittently see "Failed to initialize SdAppServices" on login.

Clean Boot test I ran a proper Clean Boot (all non Microsoft services disabled, all startup apps disabled except Fences, three other Stardock products I don't use - Start11, Groupy, IconPackager - fully uninstalled beforehand) and left background performance logging running (typeperf, sampling every second: CPU percent, Interrupts/sec, Context Switches/sec, explorer.exe CPU percent and thread count).

With Fences as the only third party software active, the freeze still occurred. One episode was severe enough that even the separate background logging process itself stalled for over four minutes, which tells me this isn't narrowly a keyboard input quirk, it's a genuine system level stall coming from somewhere in Explorer's process.

System info

  • Windows 11 Pro, i7-13700K, 64GB RAM
  • Fences 6.46 (6.4.6.1)
  • Issue has persisted across at least one full reinstall attempt and predates it based on my records

I have detailed timestamped logs (typeperf CSVs) covering multiple episodes including the Clean Boot test if that would help. Has anyone else seen explorer.exe instability tied to Fences on 6.44/6.46? I saw the release feedback thread about the "Explorer failed to close properly" issue from 6.44, which I also hit personally in April, so I know that version had real problems, but this feels like it may be a related or ongoing issue rather than something fully resolved in 6.46.

Any guidance appreciated.

Thanks, Wayne