AOL Desktop

AOL Desktop places your entire AOL world directly on your desktop. The package contains an AOL web browser, as well as the means of accessing your AOL mail, chat application and other contents at a moment's notice. It is offered completely free of charge, for both older and newer Mac OS X and Windows platforms.

When launched, AOL Desktop will place a toolbar on the top portion of your screen. It contains shortcuts to all sorts of contents, like news, weather, sports, TV, music and others, which can be accessed through AOL, on its proprietary browser. Among these shortcuts, you can also find options for simply launching the browser and for accessing your AOL mail and an instant messenger.

The AOL toolbar will disappear and reappear automatically, when the browser is active or inactive or when the AOL icon in the dock is selected or not, so it won't stay there forever to hinder your work. Furthermore, the toolbar is customizable, so you can arrange the icons however you want, place new ones, add fixed or flexible spaces and more.

The web browser itself is as straightforward as one can be. It provides support for multi-tab browsing, bookmarking web pages and it provides a quick search field, besides the address bar. Despite its simple appearance, it has to be mentioned that the AOL browser is quite fast. Regardless of how you access a website, you can expect it to be loaded within a few seconds.