Desktop Mode

Àpèjúwe

Desktop Mode renders /wp-admin as a desktop operating system. Admin screens open as draggable, resizable, minimizable windows on a desktop, with a left-edge dock built from the admin menu. The classic admin stays untouched for everyone else, and deactivating the plugin restores vanilla Core exactly.

Built and maintained by Automattic — the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Zero Core patches: every feature is wired through public WordPress hooks.

Highlights

• Per-user opt-in. An admin-bar toggle flips a user-meta flag; nobody else sees any change.
• Window system. Iframe windows load admin pages chromelessly. Native windows render directly in the parent DOM via a public registration API. Both share drag, resize, minimize, maximize, fullscreen, and detach-to-new-tab.
• Dock + taskbar. Left-edge dock for core menus; bottom macOS-style pill taskbar for plugin menus. Letter-badge icon fallback for plugins without icon art.
• Virtual desktops (“Spaces”). Multiple desktops per user, each with its own window set. Overview grid surfaces the Spaces switcher and thumbnails.
• Arrange & snap. Cascade, Tile, Overview, Snap-to-grid. Plugins contribute custom entries.
• Wallpaper & widget registries. Server- and client-side registration. CSS presets plus canvas (WebGL/2D) wallpapers with collision-aware surface data for snow/rain/physics effects.
• Desktop icons. Wallpaper-layer shortcuts that open native windows or admin URLs.
• AI Copilot (optional). Cmd+K palette backed by an agentic loop with built-in search tools. Disabled until you supply an API key. See “External services” below.
• Slash commands & palettes. Public registration APIs for plugin authors.
• Cross-frame drag bridge. Media-library attachments drag across iframe boundaries.
• Session persistence. Window stack (including desktops, focus, state) restored across reloads.
• i18n. Full gettext coverage across PHP and TypeScript; Spanish translation shipped.

For plugin authors

Desktop Mode is built to be extended. Every significant behavior is hookable — add a desktop icon, register a dock item, gate desktop mode by role, react to window events, or register a native window, all from your own plugin with zero patches here.

Comprehensive PHP and JavaScript hook surface, plus stable desktop_mode_register_* functions for windows, widgets, wallpapers, icons, window tabs, commands, settings tabs, and AI tools. See the developer docs on GitHub.

External services

This pluginÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s optional AI Copilot sends data to OpenAI (https://api.openai.com/v1/responses) when, and only when, an administrator configures an OpenAI API key in Settings → AI. With no key configured, no external requests are made.

When the AI Copilot is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette):

• What is sent: the userÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, the chosen model identifier (e.g. gpt-4o-mini), and tool-call metadata. The pluginÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to OpenAI as part of the agentic loop.
• When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if enabled) on save_post, term-save, and comment-save hooks for auto-analysis. Auto-analysis runs server-side as part of the post-save flow.
• Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Copilot.
• Who provides the service: OpenAI, L.L.C. — see the OpenAI Terms of Use and the OpenAI Privacy Policy.

The AI CopilotÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s provider layer is also extensible: third-party plugins may register additional providers via desktop_mode_register_ai_provider(). Those providers may send data to other endpoints; review each pluginÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s own privacy disclosure separately.

No other external services are contacted by this plugin.

Credits

Desktop Mode is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub.

Third-party libraries

The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use:

• PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the interactive OS Settings → About scene, the Content Graph window, and built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo). PixiJS is loaded from the pluginÌtumọ̀ Yorùbá: ’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made.