The present disclosure relates to streaming individual application windows and/or other desktop elements of a remote desktop. Data used to represent irrelevant desktop areas may be replaced with lower entropy data that may be highly compressed in a video stream and/or with data representative of other visual content. The video stream may also include desktop metadata (e.g., locations for desktop visuals, etc.) used to render the desktop elements on the local desktop. The desktop visuals of an application window may be rendered in a proxy window on the local desktop.