I'm pretty sure it is just an organizational thing for windows so that you don't have to alt+tab as much theoretically. I might be wrong though, and I too am curious if people see benefits to them with screenreaders.

I see lots of benefits.  I have 10+ windows open regularly: 2 vscode, spotify, a couple browsers, slack, another text editor, sometimes a third browser window, a terminal, sometimes a second terminal...at that point being able to categorize your stuff and not wade through the alt-tab hell is super super helpful, and you can basically get to the point whre it's like "O I need thing x, pound these two keys" reliably.

It would be more than two keys though, wouldn't it? I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. You have these ten windows minimum open, right? How are you splitting them up? Do you have ten desktops? But then you have to ctrl-win-left/right through those desktops. So I assume you split them up on to fewer desktops. So let's say five. Now you have to switch to the right desktop, and then alt-tab to the right window.

Is switching desktops faster than alt-tabbing? Because yeah I admit, that can be pretty slow sometimes, and the order gets weird, sometimes if I alt-tab I feel like it goes 1, 2,3, 1, 4, stuff like that. I don't know if that's because I let up on one of the keys and it starts switching into a window or what, but the order just gets odd sometimes, so I have to alt-tab through more than once to get to the right window in the set. It's probably why I don't have bunches of windows open.

So I get that it's an organizational thing. I guess I'm just looking for a little more than "I have ten windows open, imagine alt-tabbing between those"? Yeah, that would suck. I'm trying to figure out why switching through X desktops and then alt-tabbing between Y windows is better. So you wake up in the morning. You boot Windows. Then what? Are your desktops named, so you switch to the communication desktop and open up Skype and Discord on it, or Slack, I think that's some sort of messenger thingy? Do you have the browser(s) always on the same desktop, so you never, for example, hear a new group on Spotify and open up a browser on that desktop to look up info on them, you always switch to the browser desktop?

I guess I feel like I understand most of the mechanics of virtual desktops now, although I could be wrong so feel free to toss in any info if I've missed something. You win-tab, and make a new one or rename it or whatever. However many you've made, they get saved. You switch between them with ctrl-win-left/right, and whatever you open up on one only exists on that desktop, except for things like the interfaceless Twitter clients I guess. So instead of having twenty-five windows to alt-tab through on one desktop, you have some number of windows on some number of desktops. So you switch desktops and then alt-tab between whatever's open on the one you land on.

That's the mechanical stuff, how you make them and how they work once you make them. Now I want to know how you use them day to day. Is your machine and all of those windows just running constantly, or do you have to set them up again at least occasionally? How's that work, what's it like? Once you get them set up, how are you using them? Do you have, say, Spotify on one desktop because if you need to pause it or whatever, it's faster to switch to that desktop and get to it then it is to alt-tab through things? I guess I kind of get what's going on. it still seems to be adding extra steps to me. So I'm still trying to figure out how it makes things better, practically speaking.

For me, I have something like Skype closed, well minimized to the system tray or whatever it does. When I get a message, I hit win-m, type 'sk' to get to Skype, and hit enter. Then it's open and I get to the message. I gather the suggestion is that leaving Skype and whatever else works like it open on their own desktop would be faster than doing that? But I guess that depends on how many desktops you have, so that's why I'm asking about daily practical usage, as anybody who uses them sees it, understanding that your organizational scheme might not work for me. because I want to give these a try now. But I'm still not quite seeing the advantages, practically speaking.

Anything that has to stay open that I want out of my way. I don't do the n-utils or winwizard thing, so virtual desktops work fine for that. Imagine either a few virtual machines open or maybe a terminal command that's expected to take a while, like moving stuff from an SSD to a spinning disk to make more room on the SSD. I also used them back when WSL's terminal had to stay open for the kernel to keep running.

When you hit win-tab, at least in Windows 11, and get to the desktop area, if you make a new one, select it in that area, then right click, you can rename it there.

I think there's an issue yeah, no idea if it will get fixed, but it came up on the NVDA list, which is what started me to wondering about virtual desktops again. Thanks everybody for the feedback.

@Chris, You can rename Virtual Desktops by accessing Task View, and pressing F2 on the desktop you want to rename.