The Advanced Docking System for your Windows

Winstep Nexus Dock

Winstep Nexus Dock

  -  37.92 MB  -  Demo
  • Latest Version

    Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 LATEST

  • Review by

    Marian Marinescu

  • Operating System

    Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10 / Windows 11

  • User Rating

    Click to vote
  • Author / Product

    Winstep Team / External Link

  • Filename

    nexus.zip

  • MD5 Checksum

    b3252bac75909964f96e017690e741ac

The Winstep Nexus Dock is a FREE professional dock for Windows. With Nexus, your most frequently used applications are only a mouse click away - and Nexus turns working with your computer into a fun and exciting experience. By using it you can easily place your most frequently used applications, shortcuts, and directories on a dock that is easily accessible, but that is just the start.



You can also use integrated plugins to route important information from the web into your dock most notably weather information from any destination in the world. By having this app installed on your PC, users can choose whether or not they want to completely remove the classic Windows taskbar and change it with this stylish dock or to place the dock on some other part of the desktop and use both at the same time. It is important to note that Winstep Nexus Dock fully supports multi-monitor configurations.

Configuration of Winstep Nexus Dock is streamlined to a level that even the complete PC novices can easily master it, and on mere minutes create their own personalized desktop experience that will increase their productivity and bring a little fun to their work. Because docks can hold more than just shortcuts to applications and directories, users are encouraged to create more of them, some for apps, some for widgets that are monitoring your system, and over the last few years, designers from all around the world managed to create a strikingly beautiful icon and widget designs that can really make your Windows Desktop pop and look very unique.

Features and Highlights
  • Display running applications on the dock with task grouping, filtering, and icon customization options.        
  • Display system tray on the dock as single or grouped icons.        
  • Blur-Behind and colorization of dock backgrounds.        
  • Monitor active connections and bandwidth usage with the Net Meter module.        
  • Get weather forecasts for over 39,000 cities worldwide.        
  • Multiple mouse over effects: zoom, swing, bounce, and more!        
  • Live icon reflections and animated water-like effects for reflections and dock backgrounds.        
  • Easily change the appearance of icons of running programs and shortcuts by drag & dropping PNG, ICO, and TIF files directly into the icon.        
  • Multi-monitor support.        
  • Compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.
The following features are disabled in demo version:
  • Multiple docks.
  • Ability to group shortcuts into an unlimited number of nested sub-docks.
  • Categorize applications into user-defined tabs on the Shelf (tabbed dock).
  • Increase productivity by displaying folders, the Desktop, My Computer, Control Panel and other virtual system folders as tabs on the Shelf.
  • Reduce clutter by hiding desktop icons and using the Shelf's Desktop tab instead.
  • One click theme switching via the special Themes tab on the Shelf.
  • Exclusive modules/widgets (e.g.; calendar plus battery monitor module).
  • Even more amazing mouse-over, launch and attention effects.
  • Unlimited number of clock alarms and reminders.
  • Customize system tray with high resolution icons.
  • Automatic installs and updates via the Winstep Update Manager.


  • Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshots

    The images below have been resized. Click on them to view the screenshots in full size.

    Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshot 1
  • Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshot 2
  • Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshot 3
  • Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshot 4
  • Winstep Nexus Dock 25.2 Screenshot 5

What's new in this version:

- v25.2 is mainly a maintenance release, with some quality of life and stability improvements! Most importantly, it improves Windows 11 compatibility by bringing back functional access to the system tray in Windows 11 24H2, reserved screen areas are reset when returning from sleep, major language files have been updated, etc... Please read complete change log below.

Important note to Windows 11 22H2 and above users:
- Starting with Windows 11 22H2, and mostly for purely cosmetic reasons, Microsoft has begun making changes to tried and tested core functions of Windows that had previously been working fine for decades.
- Microsoft has been making many core changes to the Windows taskbar and systray. As a result systray icons can no longer be accessed directly by Winstep applications, and while the systray can still be accessed by the user, system tray icon customization with high resolution icons is currently no longer possible.
- Microsoft also made changes to the mechanism used by Windows to reserve areas at the edges of the screen so toolbars (such as the Windows taskbar, docks, etc) are not overlapped by maximized windows. If you are using a Winstep application to replace the Windows taskbar, you must now MANUALLY set the Windows taskbar to auto-hide first in order to prevent conflicts (while previously the Winstep application would do this for you). A new 'Reset Reserved Screen Space' internal command has been added to help with the current unreliable behavior of reserved screen areas under Windows 11 22H2 onwards.
- Despite numerous reports from Windows Insiders prior to the official release, 22H2 broke CPU usage reporting (total and per-process) at the API level. This affected 3rd party applications and even Windows Task Manager itself (CPU usage values reported in the Details tab were meaningless). Like other 3rd party software vendors, Winstep was forced to work around this issue in order to report accurate CPU usage values. Windows 11 24H2 seems to have finally fixed the problem.

WorkShelf v25.2 complete change log:
- Updated Swedish language file
- Updated German language file
- Updated Japanese language file
- Updated French language file
- Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file
- Updated Portuguese language file
- The 'Disable All Animations' setting now also disables the animations of the Live Preview Thumbnails
- Unchecking the 'Show system tray in this dock' setting no longer disables the 'Group system tray icons' and 'Always show all system tray icons' settings
- Increased the distance the mouse pointer must travel before a drag operation is initiated from 3 to 7 pixels to help prevent accidental drags
- Balloon tooltip of RAM Meter module now also states used memory in GB in addition to percentage of RAM used
- Added warning about systray customization no longer being functional after Windows 11 23H2
- Screen reserved areas are now reset upon returning from Sleep/Hibernation
- The Windows 11 22H2/23H2 CPU usage mitigation settings no longer appear on the CPU Meter settings panel if running Windows 11 24H2 as Microsoft seems to have finally fixed the problem
- Restore Module Positions might restore the desktop modules into their previous positions if changes were made and saved without restarting the application afterwards
- The power events log might not be displayed in full if the file became somehow corrupted with NULL chars. To prevent this any NULL chars embedded in it are now automatically removed when opening the file.
- 'Run as Administrator' setting in the Item Properties dialog appeared cropped on systems with 150% screen DPI or above
- When launching via a menu some applications that required elevation in their manifest, the UAC prompt might still appear minimized in the taskbar
- Fixed system tray area appearing completely empty in Windows 11 24H2
- Made sure system tray still showed the tray expand button and the system tray icons cog button under Windows 11 23H2 and above even if the "show all system tray icons" setting was enabled

NextSTART v25.2 complete change log:
- Updated Swedish language file
- Updated German language file
- Updated Japanese language file
- Updated French language file
- The 'Disable All Animations' setting now also disables the animations of the Live Preview Thumbnails
- Added warning about systray customization no longer being functional after Windows 11 23H2
- Fixed system tray area appearing completely empty in Windows 11 24H2
- Made sure system tray still showed the tray expand button and the system tray icons cog button under Windows 11 23H2 and above even if the "show all system tray icons" setting was enabled