Here lies the central problem. The original hosting sites for Delphi Distiller (like delphi-distiller.com or personal blogs from the mid-2000s) have long since been decommissioned. Searching for "Delphi Distiller 1.85 download" today leads you through a minefield of:
Because the tool is no longer maintained and the source code was never officially open-sourced, there is no "official" download location anymore. This forces users to rely on community backups. delphi distiller 1.85 download
Click "Apply" and then "Backup registry" when prompted (always keep a backup). Restart your Delphi IDE. The changes should take effect immediately. Here lies the central problem
Delphi Distiller is a freeware utility created by a developer known as "Thomas." It was designed to address one of the most frustrating limitations of older Delphi IDE versions: the inability to customize the "Component Palette" beyond simple reordering or the lack of support for desktop themes. More specifically, Delphi Distiller allowed developers to: Because the tool is no longer maintained and
While CodeGear (now Embarcadero) eventually integrated some of these features into later versions of Delphi (like Delphi 2007 and beyond), the classic Delphi 7 IDE—still widely used for legacy maintenance—never received an official update for these quality-of-life improvements. Hence, Delphi Distiller became the de facto standard.