Object Desktop — initially entitled The Workplace Toolset/2 — was developed over three years by Brad Wardell and Kurt Westerfeld subsequent to Stardock's OS/2 Essentials, a pre-registered set of OS/2 shareware.

The initial release of Object Desktop was both praised for its functionality and criticised for performance and compatibility issues.

Object Desktop 1.5 was released on 2 May 1996, fixing many problems, and adding the following components: Users of 1.0 could upgrade for $37.

To cope with this cashflow problem, Object Desktop users who had switched from OS/2 to Windows were asked to purchase Windows subscriptions in advance of the actual software, on the understanding that their subscription period would only begin when the software was reasonably complete (which ended up as December 1999).

The flagship component of Object Desktop became WindowBlinds; other popular additions were IconPackager, ObjectBar, DesktopX, DeskScapes and Fences.

Historically, the initial subscription fee for the Windows version of Object Desktop has been $49.95, while a year's renewal or an upgrade from a standalone component has been $34.95.

These components are available to all Object Desktop subscribers as of February 2010: The first versions of WindowBlinds were released in 1998 for Windows 95.

Registered versions add shell integration and the ability to change the icons that represent file formats in Windows Explorer.

ObjectBar also integrated the functionality of Stardock's ControlCenter, but has been largely superseded by WindowBlinds and ObjectDock on Windows Vista and later.

Some non-Object Desktop users have said the beta issue creates a double standard and forces people to upgrade to Object Desktop in order to get the latest features, while Stardock says that the policy is due to too many standalone users expecting beta versions to have the same reliability as release versions, and the increased ease of releasing a build on Impulse over a separate installation package.