The Winstep Nexus dock is a FREE dock for Windows. Every feature you’d expect from a dock, including widgets, mouse-over effects, skins, drag-and-drop, and many others not available in most other docks, such as live icon reflections, in-dock system tray, blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, with thousands of different backgrounds freely available online, Nexus is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.

Version 26.1 is a major update that significantly improves Windows integration through the addition of the Recent Files feature of Jump Lists, introduces a powerful and extensible Disk Meter module (Nexus Ultimate), and delivers a long list of improvements across performance, customization, diagnostics, and reliability.

Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 7, 8.x, 10 and 11.

What's New? Highlighted Features:

• New Disk Meter Module (Nexus Ultimate).

The new Disk Meter module delivers a clear, real-time view of disk activity, capacity, and drive health in a single, highly customizable widget. It is available as an iconic module that monitors a single drive and can optionally display SMART-based temperature and SSD wear information.




The Disk Meter module is designed for compact, at-a-glance monitoring. It allows users to select a specific drive to monitor, overlay key statistics directly on the icon, and visualize used and free space, with optional disk activity indicators.




Available in two styles (drive and ring chart), full color customization is supported via the Icon Factory, allowing the module to blend seamlessly with any dock or theme.




The Icon Factory also includes several built-in colorization presets and allows users to save their own color customization settings as new presets for easy reuse.

In addition to layout and appearance options, the Disk Meter offers fine-grained control over what information is displayed and how it is presented.

Users can independently configure primary and secondary metrics for the module, such as disk activity, temperature, or SMART health indicators, and choose whether this information appears as text, visual overlays, or both.

For iconic meters, top and bottom text overlays can be enabled or disabled independently to avoid visual clutter.

The settings dialog also allows users to select which fixed drives are monitored, control whether drive activity is shown, and choose the default theme applied to the module. Clear warnings and contextual notes help prevent unsupported configurations, ensuring the module remains both powerful and easy to use.

A Disk Information dialog presents a clear, visually rich overview of a selected drive, combining all the capacity, performance, and health data in one place. Key details such as used and free space, drive model, real-time activity, temperature, and SSD wear are displayed alongside a prominent visual indicator, making it easy to assess both usage and drive health at a glance.




As illustrated above, the Disk Meter supports extensive customization, including the ability to replace the default drive images with user-created and theme provided icons.



• Support for Jumplist Recent Files.

Winstep now integrates with Windows Jump Lists to expose Recent Files directly in application and task context menus.





• Applications that support Windows Jump Lists automatically show a Recent sub-menu.
• Individual entries can be removed directly from the menu.
• For privacy, this behavior can be disabled via Preferences → Tasks → “Show Recent Files in context menu”.




This brings Winstep’s task handling much closer to native Windows behavior while keeping full user control.



• Multiple Improvements to the Management of Docks, Shelves, Drawers, Grid-Stacks and Launch-Pads (Nexus Ultimate).

Vastly increased the robustness and flexibility of managing docks, shelves, drawers, grid stacks and launch pads, both via context menu actions but especially via drag & drop.






• Drag‑and‑drop handling has been significantly hardened, especially when moving or copying sub-docks, Grid Stacks, and Launch Pads with nested elements.
• Improved drag & drop between a sub-dock or Grid Stack and another sub-dock or Grid Stack within the same parent container. Since only one can be open at a time, opening the target during a drag automatically closes the source, which could interrupt the source’s drop-completion logic and lead to unintended results. Drag & drop now completes correctly even if the source is closed while the target opens.
• Containers like Sub-docks, Grid-Stacks, etc, can now be copied with all their content into other containers, not just moved.
• The "Make Tab from Dock", "Make Dock from Tab", "Make Drawer from Tab", "Make Tab from Drawer" and "Make Drawer from Dock" commands now correctly copy sub-docks, Grid Stacks, and Launch Pads, whereas previously these elements were simply ignored.
• Hybrid dock items (items that link to both an application shortcut and a sub-dock) now allow independent deletion of either the sub-dock or the shortcut. This hybrid configuration is normally available only when "Allow attaching sub-docks to existing application shortcuts" is enabled.




• New Histogram & Meter Enhancements.

Histogram meters now render filled areas semi-transparent for a cleaner, more modern look..






• Icon Factory Enhancements.

Alongside exporting icons as PNGs, users can now save, edit, and delete their own Icon Factory presets.

First introduced in v25.9 and originally designed to fine-tune the Nexus dock control icon using independent HSL adjustments for both the background shape and the "Nexus" text, the Icon Factory dialog now also powers customization for the new Disk Meter module.







• Dock Functionality Improvements:


• Users can now convert Sub-Docks to Grid Stacks and vice-versa (Nexus Ultimate).
  
  This option can also be handy if you simply want to copy or move multiple items at once: docks and sub-docks only allow dragging a single item at a time, but shelves, drawers, and Grid Stacks support multi-selection. You can temporarily convert a sub-dock into a Grid Stack, move multiple items to another container, and then convert it back into a sub-dock.
  
  However, please note that only Grid Stacks of Regular type can be converted to sub-docks.





• Halo Suppression Color option added to the Dock Transparency dialog of docks to reduce glow artifacts. Some displays could show a faint glow (halo) around transparent parts of docks, changing the Halo Supression Color will reduce or completely eliminate this issue.


• A new "Treat offset area as an active dock zone" option has been added to the Position tab of the Dock Properties dialog.
  
  
  • This setting only appears - and only applies - when the dock is configured with a positive offset from the screen edge.
  • When enabled, it overrides the option "Respect space reserved by other docks, toolbars, and screen objects", effectively disabling that behavior.
  • Be aware that turning this on makes the entire gap between the dock and the screen edge behave as part of the dock itself, which means it becomes very difficult to click anything else in that space.
  
  
  When you enable this setting, the gap between the dock and the screen edge (created by a positive offset) becomes part of the dock’s interactive zone. This means:
  
  
  • Mouse actions in that gap - like hovering, clicking, or dragging - will still affect the dock and its icons.
  • Even if your pointer isn’t directly over the dock, it behaves as if it is, just like on macOS.
  
  


• Usability & Interaction Enhancements.





• More granular auto-popup delay for sub‑docks and grid stacks (0–1000 ms in 50 ms steps) (Nexus Ultimate)
• Improved the way the application deals with Unicode filenames that cannot be directly converted to ANSI
• Dropping a shortcut while pressing the ALT key now forces shortcuts to remain unresolved (useful for 64 bit redirection issues).
• Resolved a problem that caused certain items pointing to shortcuts (.lnk files) to override the shortcut's "Start in" folder settings, preventing the shortcut from launching correctly.
• Warning dialogs added for "Lock Icons" and clock‑dial color overrides.
• Added "Allow themes to change module icons" setting to the Theme Options dialog in the General tab of Preferences that lets you block themes from changing module icons. Enabled by default, when turned off your own module icon color settings stay the same even if you switch themes.
• "Show Container" context menu option now opens Explorer with the target file pre‑selected.







• Performance enhancements.

The high resolution multimedia timer used to control the timing of animations now only fires while the animation is actually playing.


As customary with Winstep applications, the new Disk Meter module is designed for maximum efficiency: only icons linked to drives with updated data are refreshed, the desktop module redraws just the sections that have changed, and the application retrieves only the information explicitly required or selected by the user - minimizing resource usage while maintaining real-time responsiveness (Nexus Ultimate).



• Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements.





• Fixed a crash caused by a hard‑coded limit on the number of IP addresses when retrieving network module data.
• The Make Tab from Dock, Make Dock from Tab, Make Drawer from Tab, Make Tab from Drawer and Make Drawer from Dock features were cross-linking Grid stacks and Launch pads (Nexus Ultimate).
• Copying sub‑docks from docks to shelves, grid stacks, and drawers worked correctly, but moving them failed (Nexus Ultimate).
• Restored the functionality of the Snooze button in alarm reminders.
• Recent Documents and Folder tabs now correctly honor “Sort by Creation Date” (Nexus Ultimate).
• Resolved an issue in the global icon cache that could return incorrect icon info when virtual shell objects shared the same name (Nexus Ultimate).
• Corrected a problem where docks showing only running indicators could display live previews from the wrong application.
• Fixed an issue where launching shortcuts (.lnk files) ignored their “Start in” folder, preventing proper launching.



• Many other features plus performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...

Nexus v26.1 complete change log:

• The 'Show Container' context menu option now opens the container folder in Explorer as before but with the target file pre-selected.
• The Weather module will now report the status line of the MSN server HTTP response if the connection fails (e.g. "400 Bad Request").
• Added "Treat offset area as an active dock zone' setting to the Position tab of Preferences. This setting is only visible and only has an effect if the user specifies a positive offset from the screen edge when docked. When enabled, it overrides the "Respect space reserved by other docks, toolbars, and screen objects" setting, rendering it inactive. Please note that enabling this setting makes it nearly impossible to click on anything other than the dock in the gap between the dock and the screen edge.
• Added support for the "Recent Files" feature of Windows Jumplists. The context menu of applications and running tasks now includes (if the application supports it) a 'Recent' sub-menu which displays a list of the latest files/documents opened by that application. For privacy reasons this behavior can be disabled by unchecking the "Show Recent Files in context menu" setting in the Tasks tab of Preferences. Specific entries in the list can also be removed by right clicking on them and selecting "Remove from list".
• Removed "utcnist.colorado.edu" from the list of available time servers as it shutdown on May 30, 2025, and replaced it with "time-c.nist.gov" located in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• Some displays may show a faint glow (halo) around transparent parts of docks. Because this behavior depends on hardware and drivers, a new "Halo Suppression Color" setting has been added to the Dock Transparency dialog. This allows users to choose either black or white for the transparent pixels - whichever option works best on their system.
• Improved the way the application deals with Unicode filenames that cannot be directly converted to ANSI.
• Pressing the ALT key while dropping a shortcut (.lnk file) to the dock prevents Nexus from automatically resolving the shortcut, and the dropped item then points to (and launches) the shortcut file and not the shortcut target file itself. This can be useful with launching problematic 64 bit applications due to the 64 bit file re-direction or other related issue.
• The "Import Theme" button in the Themes tab of Preferences is used to import both native Winstep themes and themes for 3rd party docks. The Winstep application makes the distinction by first extracting the folder/files to \Winstep\Themes\ then scanning the extracted theme folder for Winstep configuration files (e.g. *.wst, *.nxs, etc). If none are found it assumes it is a theme for a 3rd party dock and moves the theme folder to \Winstep\Themes\Nexus\Backgrounds\. However, some theme authors stored the actual Winstep theme folder inside the zip file, which when extracted resulted in something like this: \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme\NewTheme . Winstep theme configuration files would be inside the nested (second level) NewTheme folder, and since the Winstep application only scanned \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme, the theme was erroneously moved to \Winstep\Themes\Nexus\Backgrounds\. The Winstep application now also scans the second level folder, and if Winstep theme files are found there it moves them to the first level folder (\Winstep\Themes\NewTheme) and then deletes the (now empty) \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme\NewTheme folder.
• Added same behavior as "Import Theme" to double clicking a .xtreme theme file.
• For iconic meter modules (such as CPU, Net, etc), for a cool effect the filled part of an Histogram style is now semi-transparent instead of a solid color, with the actual graphic lines remaining opaque.
• Added a "Home" toggle to the Change Icon dialog for modules like the one in the Change Icon dialog for normal items. When active the browse path always starts in the Winstep icon samples folder.
• Changed the layout and organization of the Troubleshooting Options dialog.
• Added a warning and confirmation message box when the users tries to enable "lock icons" as this setting will also prevent drag & drop from working.
• Added a warning in the Clock Settings dialog that the color of the analog clock dial cannot be changed if an image set by the user or by the active theme is currently overriding it.
• Users can now create and save their own presets in the "Icon Factory" dialog used for customizing the colors of the Nexus control icon.
• Optimized the multi-media timer used for controlling animations to the ms so that now it only fires when absolutely needed.
• Histogram modules are now filled by default.
• Added new "Allow themes to change module icons" to the Theme Options dialog in the General tab of Preferences. Enabled by default, themes are not allowed to change the current settings of the iconic modules when disabled (so module icon colorization settings are not overridden when you switch to a different theme, etc).
• Object description text in the delete confirmation dialog is now centered vertically in relation to the icon.
• Re-organized the Advanced Task Settings dialog.
• Added "Load Recent Files only when opening the submenu" option to Advanced Task Settings dialog, allowing faster context menus by deferring Recent Files Jump List checks until the submenu is opened.
• A low hard coded limit for the number of IP addresses on the system meant the application could crash if that number exceeded the limit while retrieving data for the network module (which is enabled by default).
• The "Snooze" button in alarm reminders was no longer working due to a recent change.
• Fixed issues with the LCD Color color well in the Alarm Editor dialog.
• The Edge Bump Settings dialog would assume the old Edge Bump delay rather than any value changed in the parent Activation Settings dialog.
• A dock showing running indicators without also showing the list of running applications might show live previews of windows belonging to the wrong application.
• Fixed issue that could cause a dock to bounce to the wrong position and back again when playing the activate animation if the dock was offset from the screen edge and displaying running applications and/or the system tray.
• If a running executable was dropped into a dock that only showed running indicators (not running applications) and combine dock icons was enabled, the item could incorrectly behave as though running applications were being displayed in that dock.
• Resolved a problem that caused certain items pointing to shortcuts (.lnk files) to override the shortcut's "Start in" folder settings, preventing the shortcut from launching correctly.

Nexus Ultimate v26.1 complete change log:

• The popup delay of sub-docks, grid stacks , etc, set to open on mouseover is now more granular, from 0 to 1000 ms in 50 ms intervals.
• The 'Show Container' context menu option now opens the container folder in Explorer as before but with the target file pre-selected.
• The Weather module will now report the status line of the MSN server HTTP response if the connection fails (e.g. "400 Bad Request").
• Added "Treat offset area as an active dock zone' setting to the Position tab of the Dock Properties dialog. This setting is only visible and only has an effect if the user specifies a positive offset from the screen edge when docked. When enabled, it overrides the "Respect space reserved by other docks, toolbars, and screen objects" setting, rendering it inactive. Please note that enabling this setting makes it nearly impossible to click on anything other than the dock in the gap between the dock and the screen edge.
• Added support for the "Recent Files" feature of Windows Jumplists. The context menu of applications and running tasks now includes (if the application supports it) a 'Recent' sub-menu which displays a list of the latest files/documents opened by that application. For privacy reasons this behavior can be disabled by unchecking the "Show Recent Files in context menu" setting in the Tasks tab of Preferences. Specific entries in the list can also be removed by right clicking on them and selecting "Remove from list".
• Removed "utcnist.colorado.edu" from the list of available time servers as it shutdown on May 30, 2025, and replaced it with "time-c.nist.gov" located in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• Some displays may show a faint glow (halo) around transparent parts of docks. Because this behavior depends on hardware and drivers, a new "Halo Suppression Color" setting has been added to the Dock Transparency dialog. This allows users to choose either black or white for the transparent pixels - whichever option works best on their system.
• Improved the way the application deals with Unicode filenames that cannot be directly converted to ANSI.
• Pressing the ALT key while dropping a shortcut (.lnk file) to a dock or regular shelf tab prevents the Winstep application from automatically resolving the shortcut, and the dropped item then points to (and launches) the shortcut file and not the shortcut target file itself. This can be useful with launching problematic 64 bit applications due to the 64 bit file re-direction or other related issue.
• The "Import Theme" button in the Themes tab of Preferences is used to import both native Winstep themes and themes for 3rd party docks. The Winstep application makes the distinction by first extracting the folder/files to \Winstep\Themes\ then scanning the extracted theme folder for Winstep configuration files (e.g. *.wst, *.nxs, etc). If none are found it assumes it is a theme for a 3rd party dock and moves the theme folder to \Winstep\Themes\Nexus\Backgrounds\. However, some theme authors stored the actual Winstep theme folder inside the zip file, which when extracted resulted in something like this: \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme\NewTheme . Winstep theme configuration files would be inside the nested (second level) NewTheme folder, and since the Winstep application only scanned \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme, the theme was erroneously moved to \Winstep\Themes\Nexus\Backgrounds\. The Winstep application now also scans the second level folder, and if Winstep theme files are found there it moves them to the first level folder (\Winstep\Themes\NewTheme) and then deletes the (now empty) \Winstep\Themes\NewTheme\NewTheme folder.
• Added same behavior as "Import Theme" to double clicking a .xtreme theme file.
• For iconic meter modules (such as CPU, Net, etc), for a cool effect the filled part of an Histogram style is now semi-transparent instead of a solid color, with the actual graphic lines remaining opaque.
• Added a "Home" toggle to the Change Icon dialog for modules like the one in the Change Icon dialog for normal items. When active the browse path always starts in the Winstep icon samples folder.
• Added a warning and confirmation message box when the users tries to enable "lock icons" as this setting will also prevent drag & drop from working globally.
• Added a warning in the Clock Settings dialog that the color of the analog clock dial cannot be changed if an image set by the user or by the active theme is currently overriding it.
• Users can now create and save their own presets in the "Icon Factory" dialog used for customizing the colors of the Nexus control icon.
• New Disk Meter module. The new Disk Meter delivers a clear, real‑time view of drive performance and health. The user can choose which drive to monitor, which key stats to overlay, and visualize used/free space with an optional activity LED. Full color customization is supported via the Icon Factory. Optional SMART integration allows tracking of drive temperature and SSD wear. Lightweight, efficient updates ensure minimal resource usage.
• Changed the layout and organization of the Troubleshooting Options dialog.
• Added new "View Disk Meter Status" button to the Troubleshooting Options dialog. Drive temperatures and SSD drive wear are retrieved via the SMART health-monitoring system. Because SMART data can only be accessed with elevated rights, retrieval has to be handled by the Winstep helper service (WsxService.exe). Some SMART protocols are proprietary or problematic; the Disk Meter Status dialog provides visibility into service‑level operations for monitoring and diagnostic purposes.
• The Winstep Helper Service is now able to retrieve drive temperature and SSD wear levels for most fixed drives, provided this information is available and exposed by the drive’s protocol (excluding proprietary protocols). It offers robust handling designed to cope with problematic scenarios such as cheap USB bridges or non‑responsive drives, fail‑safe precautions with multiple safeguards to ensure the service will not hang or freeze while accessing SMART data, while at the same time preventing issues at the service level from ever propagating to or freezing the main application.
• Optimized the multi-media timer used for controlling animations to the ms so that now it only fires when absolutely needed.
• Added option to view the status of the Disk Meter PDH counters to the Disk Meter Status dialog.
• Histogram iconic modules are now filled by default.
• Added new "Allow themes to change module icons" to the Theme Options dialog in the General tab of Preferences. Enabled by default, themes are not allowed to change the current settings of the iconic modules when disabled (so module icon colorization settings are not overridden when you switch to a different theme, etc).
• Added new "Convert to Grid Stack" to the right click context menu of sub-docks. Because Grid Stacks let you select and manipulate multiple items at once - unlike docks and sub‑docks - this provides a convenient way to move large groups of items. Simply convert the sub‑dock to a Grid Stack temporarily, perform your changes, then convert it back to a sub‑dock.
• Added new "Convert to Sub-Dock" to the right click context menu of "Regular" type Grid Stacks.
• Delay between hovering a sub-dock or grid stack icon and it opening automatically during a drag and drop operation in docks is no longer fixed at 1 second but is now determined by the current sub-dock popup delay setting.
• It is now possible to copy sub-docks into docks instead of simply moving them.
• The Make Tab from Dock, Make Dock from Tab, Make Drawer from Tab, Make Tab from Drawer and Make Drawer from Dock features are now able to copy sub-docks, grid stacks and launch pads as well while previously these elements were ignored.
• Vastly improved the robustness of drag and drop, particularly when moving or copying sub-docks, Grid stacks and Launch Pads.
• Made some changes to the way sub-dock icons are initialized and handled.
• Users can now delete either the sub-dock or the attached shortcut item independently for hybrid dock items (items that link to both an application shortcut and a sub-dock). This hybrid setup is normally only available when "Allow attaching sub-docks to existing application shortcuts" is enabled.
• Object description text in the delete confirmation dialog is now centered vertically in relation to the icon.
• The delete confirmation dialog now displays a stronger warning when removing a Sub-dock, Grid Stack, or Launch Pad.
• Re-organized the Advanced Task Settings dialog.
• Unified the delete confirmation dialog across the application, ensuring a consistent experience when deleting docks, grid stacks, and other components.
• Added "Load Recent Files only when opening the submenu" option to Advanced Task Settings dialog, allowing faster context menus by deferring Recent Files Jump List checks until the submenu is opened.
• A low hard coded limit for the number of IP addresses on the system meant the application could crash if that number exceeded the limit while retrieving data for the network module (which is enabled by default).
• The "Snooze" button in alarm reminders was no longer working due to a recent change.
• Recent Documents tabs of a shelf, drawer or grid stack were not honoring "Sort by Creation Date".
• Fixed issues with the LCD Color color well in the Alarm Editor dialog.
• A Folder tabs of a shelf, drawer or grid stack were also not honoring "Sort by Creation Date".
• Fixed issue with global icon cache where the wrong icon info cold be retrieved if two or more virtual shell object in the same shelf tab had exactly the same name.
• The Edge Bump Settings dialog would assume the old Edge Bump delay rather than any value changed in the parent Activation Settings dialog.
• Fixed issue that caused a "System Returned from Low Power State" power event to not be logged sometimes.
• The installation folder of the 1,000 tiles pack users get as a bonus when they register the application was still pointing to the old Public Documents folder.
• A dock showing running indicators without also showing the list of running applications might show live previews of windows belonging to the wrong application.
• Improved drag & drop between a sub-dock or Grid Stack and another sub-dock or Grid Stack within the same parent container. Since only one can be open at a time, opening the target during a drag automatically closes the source, which could interrupt the source’s drop-completion logic and lead to unintended results (such as items being copied instead of moved and the drag image no longer following the cursor). Drag & drop now completes correctly even if the source is closed while the target opens. Note that the source once closed cannot be reopened until the drag and drop operation completes or is aborted.
• Copying sub‑docks from docks to shelves, grid stacks, and drawers worked correctly, but moving them failed.
• The Make Tab from Dock, Make Dock from Tab, Make Drawer from Tab, Make Tab from Drawer and Make Drawer from Dock features were cross-linking grid stacks and launch pads instead of ignoring them.
• Drawers were not shrinking automatically when moving items out of it via drag and drop.
• Fixed issue that could cause a dock to bounce to the wrong position and back again when playing the activate animation if the dock was offset from the screen edge and displaying running applications and/or the system tray.
• If a running executable was dropped into a dock that only showed running indicators (not running applications) and combine dock icons was enabled, the item could incorrectly behave as though running applications were being displayed in that dock.
• Resolved a problem that caused certain items pointing to shortcuts (.lnk files) to override the shortcut's "Start in" folder settings, preventing the shortcut from launching correctly.