I'm really not a blogger and very, extremely, rarely almost never post.  I made an exception here because I found a lot of people were asking the same question I've been asking.... How do you easily identify which virtual desktop you're using when on Windows 11.  The short answer is.... You fake it.  Essentially want a Virtual Desktop Name or Number to display on the desktop or in the taskbar, which is a feature not included in Windows and I could not find any software to do it easily. The answer?  I came up with my own solution. It's not the solution most people are looking for because Windows doesn't do this automatically, but for my purposes it works easily and effectively enough.  Just takes a little setup.

Let's get started.

My first step was to download the "One Photo Viewer" from the Microsoft Store.  It's free so don't panic.

Next create an image for each of your virtual desktops.  I went to cooltext.com to create mine. I saved them in a folder I called "VirtualDesktopImages". Any folder name will do as long as you know where to find it later.

Call them anything you like.  

These are .png images which are perfect for me because I want my "One Photo Viewer" to be set as the default image viewer for .png files while ignoring any other type of image format. If you regularly use .png files convert your images to another image format that you don't use.  Convert To Image Online is a good site to use or just search for image converter. (For the purpose of this blog I'll use .png)

Find the folder you saved your new images in.  When selecting your program make sure you select "ALWAYS" at the bottom of the box.  Right click on the image and chose "OPEN WITH" .  and select "One Photo Viewer". If it doesn't appear chose "Choose Another App".  "One Photo Viewer" can be hard to find because Microsoft likes to hide things in secret folders.  If you can't find it easily follow these steps:

1.  Open up File Explorer

2.  Click in the address bar which is just to the right of Home > Type in shell:appsfolder

and hit enter.  This will show you all the apps installed on your computer.

3. Find the "One Photo Viewer" app and right click on it.  Create Shortcut. (This will add a shortcut to your desktop that's much easier to locate.)

After the shortcut is on your desktop right click on your image again.  Choose "Open With"  "Choose Another App"  then scroll to the bottom and select "Choose another app on this PC". Select your Desktop folder and at the bottom right hand corner where it says "Programs" change it to "All Files"

You should be able to see the shortcut to "One Photo Viewer". Select it and your image should open.

You can then go into the program settings and turn off toolbars and anything else you don't want.  I unchecked everything that was checked and it worked out great!

Right click on the image box and click exit.

Now to make it work.

You'll need a batch file for each virtual desktop.  They're very easy to make.

Right click on an open are on your desktop and choose "New Text Document"

  I use notepad because it's simple and easy.

Double click it to open it for editing.

Each batch file is nearly identical except for your image name. You can copy and paste this

@echo off

start /b D:\VirtualDesktopImages\desktop1.png

exit

Change "VirtualDesktopImages" to the name of the folder you saved your images in.

Change desktop1.png to the name of your image for your first virtual desktop.

Save your file as desktop1.bat

You should now see a file called Desktop1 on your desktop

Edit the file again changing the desktop1.png to desktop2.png

Save the file again using desktop2.bat

@echo off

start /b D:\VirtualDesktopImages\desktop2.png

exit

Make sure you're on Desktop 1 for the next step.

While on desktop 1 click the "Desktop1" batch file you just created.

the image you created for your first desktop should appear.

You can move the image around in the box and position it where you like.

Left click at the top edge of the box to position the image on your desktop.

Change to your next desktop and repeat the process with the "Desktop2" batch file.

Remember.... every time your computer is rebooted you have to run the batch files again.

I am not a techwriter nor do I play one on TV. 

Hope this helps somebody.

Michael