Made a small tool so Show Desktop only minimizes the monitor you click

Hi all, first post here, been lurking for a while

I have 3 monitors and the Show Desktop button has been driving me nuts for years. I click the corner on my right screen because I need something from the desktop there, and boom, everything on every screen is gone, including the video and whatever I was actually looking at on the other two. 99% of the time that’s not what I want

Couldn’t find anything that fixes the actual button (DisplayFusion can kinda do it with a hotkey but I didn’t want a whole suite just for this), so I ended up writing a little tray app for myself. It’s called SmartCollapse:

• click Show Desktop → only the windows on that monitor get minimized
• click again → exactly those windows come back, same order, maximized ones stay maximized
• hover the button → peek at the desktop on that monitor only
• Shift+click if you want the normal all-monitors behavior

It doesn’t inject anything into Explorer or patch any files, it’s just a normal app with a mouse hook that only reacts to clicks on the Show Desktop button. Close it and everything is back to stock. ~250 KB, no installer

Tested on Win11 25H2 with the stock taskbar and with StartAllBack (3 monitors, different scaling, one taskbar horizontal and two vertical). Should work with ExplorerPatcher too but I haven’t tried it myself, so if someone uses EP let me know

Btw Win+D still minimizes everything like before, only the button changes. There’s a --toggle command line option though, so you can bind it to a hotkey if you want

Honest note: I built it with AI assistance. I designed it, reviewed the code and use it every day on my own setup. It’s open source (Apache-2.0) so feel free to look through it


GitHub: GitHub - zalexdev/SmartCollapse: Makes the taskbar's Show desktop button work per monitor. Click it and only the windows on that monitor are minimized; click it again and exactly those windows come back. Your other monitors are left alone.

Feedback and bug reports welcome, first time putting something like this out there

Hover peek doesn't work if you slam your cursor hard into the corner! I have to move it a couple px out for it to work! I haven't the patience to be that precise!

When you Exit your program, you have to re-check the native Peek at desktop...

Edwin said:

Hover peek doesn't work if you slam your cursor hard into the corner! I have to move it a couple px out for it to work! I haven't the patience to be that precise!

View attachment 188442

Click to expand...

Edwin said:

When you Exit your program, you have to re-check the native Peek at desktop...

View attachment 188443

Click to expand...

Hi - thanks for your feedback, these issues are now fixed in latest release: Release SmartCollapse 1.3.0 · zalexdev/SmartCollapse

Create a desktop shortcut to C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{3080F90D-D7AD-11D9-BD98-0000947B0257}
Name the shortcut Show Desktop and assign whatever icon you want to it. Right click on the shortcut and pin to taskbar. Delete the shortcut from the desktop
Simple as that. I've done it since Windows 7.

Zalexdev said:

these issues are now fixed in latest release: Release SmartCollapse 1.3.0 · zalexdev/SmartCollapse

Click to expand...

Yup..., working as expected.
Just one more small thing..., I don't care for the animation factor. As a matter of fact, I don't like animations at all.