Hide All Desktop Icons in Mac OS X
Desktop icon clutter really gets to me, but it’s hard to avoid since a lot of apps download things to the Desktop by default. It’s easy to hide the Mac hard drive icons, but what about all the other stuff that gets dumped to your desktop? Well that’s easy to hide too actually, following these instructions:
Clean up the Desktop by Hiding Desktop Icons
Launch Terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
After hitting enter, you’ll want to kill the Finder so that it relaunches and the changes take effect:
killall Finder
All of the files will still exist, but they’re now discretely hidden in your home folder’s “Desktop” directory rather than cluttering up your actual desktop.
To show the Desktop icons again, open the Mac Terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
Again, kill the Finder and your icons will show on the desktop as usual.
The other day I installed a new application called Berokyo and now I have no icons in my desktop and everything is organized in a beautiful virtual multi-shelf cabinet. The application is a Staff Pick at apple.com.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/berokyo.html
Or use the excellent freeware app Camouflage.
http://www.briksoftware.com/products/camouflage/
Works beautifully and you can define a key combination to toggle it on and off.
Problem is that in Lion, hiding desktop icons also hide wallpaper in spaces to the one in space #1.
I’m still using 10.6, and I have automatic changing wallpapers. Do you know a freeware that could handle the job?
The problem with that is, the icons are still there and taking up memory.. Camouflage just sets your wall paper to float on top (like you can set a music player, say).
You can test it by setting a much smaller wallpaper than your screen size and then toggling Camouflage on & off; the smaller picture is in a sea of icons, and merely drifts in front of the icons it covers, and the back behind them as you toggle “off.” The surrounding icons haven’t moved, and therefore nothing on the desktop has moved.
Basically its purpose is aesthetic, which would be fine– but doesn’t do the functional work of taking all that media off of your computers mind.
Too bad because i also liked that little app.
[...] This post was Twitted by AppleTwitts [...]
[...] I was looking into hiding the desktop icons on my Mac, I came across this interesting post at osxdaily.com. Rather than try the solution proposed, I checked out one of the apps recommended [...]
Maybe I’m just an old-school unix guy, but I don’t understand while everybody is mentioning all these memory grabby apps when this command line solution is simple, elegant and most importantly, doesn’t need to be loaded into memory everytime for it to work!! Great Post!!
I first ran the false line and then the true to restore the icons; however, the Macintosh HD icon no longer appears in the “Desktop” folder even though the icon for it does appear on the Desktop. I try to drag it directly to the Desktop folder, but it does not appear there, sometimes creating an alias in an adjacent folder. I have gone to Finder>Preferences and checked and unchecked the HD boxes and relaunched Finder to no avail.
How can I get the Macintosh HD icon to reappear in the Desktop folder in the Finder despite it reappearing on the desktop?
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Sorry, i readily admit i don’t have a solution for you, but– out of curiosity, why do you want for the hard drive to be *in* the Desktop folder?
It wasn’t in there before the icon fix either, so it won’t be now.
My guess is, that’s separate from the code that regulates folders– you’ll have to dig deeper into your computer for that special protocol that makes your HD sit on, but not in, your Desktop.
I’ll bet someones got a command, but i wonder if it won’t cause more harm to extract the function than just leaving it in(?)
Good luck, friend; i sure know what it’s like to wanna play with your computer– mostly my reasoning for spending hours searching & scratching my head is, “Just ‘cuz”
I must have total control- huzzah!
Thank you. When I ran the migration assistant from our old Tiger iMac to the new Snow Leopard iMac, my daughter’s desktop was not showing icons. Using the second option (-bool true) worked like a champ.
[...] and dock. Of course if you’re on the other end of the spectrum and you hate icons you can hide all desktop icons in Mac OS X, but that’s not the purpose of this article. You are here for great icons, so if you too are [...]
I have a problem that seems to be just the opposite of yours, guys…
I spent a lot of time organizing icon layout in various folders, over the years…
only to have OSX destroy these organization for no good reason, once in a while.
The last time was when I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.2.
I would pay for a way to freeze icons in a given position, chosen by me of course.
I have tried saving copies of the .DS_Store files for a few important directories; sometimes copying that back onto the .DS_Store files restores the layout. But not
always. I just don’t understand the .DS_Store laws. Why can’t I decide where I want my icons to be? This is MY computer, not Apple’s! This unrequested shuffling of icons drives me nuts.
[...] you really want to have a clean and bare desktop, you can hide all desktop icons from ever appearing via the Mac OS command [...]
I just finished making a Dashboard App to automate this a bit better for people. If this doesn’t exist yet on the Apple site I might go add it there. Otherwise I’d be willing to supply it to people.
This is interesting, but I don’t like killing the finder process to accomplish this.
John, I am interested in seeing what you have come up with. I didn’t find any contact information your site, can you please contact me: http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01P7gr3dsC5pCGwBykzh0q5A==&c=DAltQd3wyTS8lLgi3fLZd70xD_tInq3LiZbQr_KqjfM=
Thanks,
Farhan
As soon as you kill Finder, it restarts itself. Nothing to worry about here. Its just a trick to implement the setting.
Or you could kill finder by restarting the computer, it takes more time, but the same solution.
I recently got a new macbook pro and after downloading msn for mac i realized it left behind desktop icons that i really would rather not have there. I came across this webpage and maybe im just doing it wrong (?) but its not hiding anything for me and im scared to try anything else because as this is my first mac i am afraid to screw something up royally (im not very familiar with it yet).. if anyone has any ideas help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance ~ K
Just delete them from the desktop by dragging to Trash, they’re only aliases and not real files. You won’t lose the application, don’t worry.
[...] or you just don’t like the desktop icons and the clutter they can cause, you can always hide all desktop icons in Mac OS X with a simple Terminal [...]
This is the best way to hide your HD & external disks.
http://www.rockia.com/2009/09/hide-show-your-system-disk-icon-on-snow-leopard
If you keep your files organized you wont have to worry about hiding them.
[...] not interested in downloading a third party tool that does this for you, you can also manually hide all icons from the Mac desktop by using the command line defaults tool. This will force the desktop to display no icons at all. [...]
Great Post I easily managed to to hide all my desktop icons in one go
[...] cluttering icons… I have found the following method for disabling the desktop icons from here but of course should you prefer I have also typed up the steps to disable the icons. Oh I should [...]
[...] up the Desktop by Hiding Desktop Icons Launch Terminal and type the following: defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool [...]
Thank you very much! I needed to clean the Desktop to record a screencast. I confirm that the command still works in Snow Leopard 10.6.6.
[...] Again, kill the Finder and your icons will show on the desktop as usual. Clean up the Desktop by Hiding Desktop Icons via OSXDaily [...]
[...] I did find a way to take care of this problem:How to hide your Mac OS desktop iconsThis is from a post in 2009 but it still worksGo to “Applications” and find the “Utilities” folder, [...]
[...] you don’t want to deal with manually hiding and showing the desktop icons, showing hidden files, accessing the user library directory, and forcibly emptying the Trash, grab [...]
[...] Hide All Mac Desktop Icons Prove how minimalist you are with this little hack from OS X Daily. [...]
THANK YOU
[hint]Now if there were an automator service to do this without opening terminal …. [/hint]
[...] so covered in files that you can barely see the wallpaper. Sometimes mine gets so full that I just hide the desktop icons so I can deal with them later, but that’s not necessarily the best [...]
[...] http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/23/hide-all-desktop-icons-in-mac-os-x/ Share this:TwitterFacebookLinkedInStumbleUponEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]
[...] menubar apps are especially useful if you hide the Mac OS X desktop to reduce clutter, because they give you information and functionality that you’d otherwise [...]
I had a problem with my desktop, it wouldn’t let me click or show anything on it… So I tired the terminal code “defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true”
Then typed “killall Finder”
Then suddenly everything was back
THANK YOU
[...] the way, for the clean look with no desktop icons, I’ve used this little trick. I also use Rainlender for the calendar, and GeekTool for all the Date, Time, and System stats. [...]
Sweet. Thank you!
Thanks you so much for this tip.