#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC HOW TO#
#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC MAC OS X#
#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC ZIP FILE#
#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC LICENSE#
#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC DOWNLOAD#

It’s obviously easy to implement, and it’s also easy to reverse if you decide the feature isn’t for you and you want to see everything visible as usual again.

#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC MAC OS X#

Note that this process is different than simply hiding things like Mac hard drive icons and network shares from showing up on desktop, because this trick is all inclusive and hides every single icon regardless of what it is, completely preventing them from appearing on the Mac OS X Desktop whatsoever, despite still technically being stored in the users ~/Desktop directory. Notice how there is literally nothing on the desktop? Just a clean image of the background wallpaper? That’s what this trick does. If you’re wondering what this looks like when it’s in effect, it’s basically a super-clean desktop like this: All of the files still exist, but they’re now discretely hidden in your home folder’s “Desktop” directory rather than cluttering up the visible desktop.

The desktop will no longer display icons, effectively hiding them from appearing. You can expedite the hiding of the desktop icons on the Mac by turning the command string into a single line to be copied and pasted into the Terminal window, like this:ĭefaults write CreateDesktop -bool false killall Finder say icons hidden This trick works to disable the desktop and hide all the desktop icons exactly the same in all versions of MacOS and Mac OS X, from Mac OS X Snow Leopard to OS X Yosemite to MacOS Mojave and everything in between, and presumably later too. Once the command is executed correctly, the Finder will refresh and all desktop icons will instantly disappear – the files will still exist, they are just no longer visible on the desktop. Again hit Return, this refreshes the Finder and the Desktop.Next you will then need to kill the Finder so that it relaunches and the changes take effect, do that with the following command in the Terminal prompt:.Type the following defaults command string exactly:ĭefaults write CreateDesktop -bool false.Launch Terminal, found within /Applications/Utilities.Here is how you can hide all Mac desktop icons by basically disabling the desktop from appearing: If you’re ready to hide all desktop icons on a Mac, you’ll be using the command line to accomplish this task.

#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC HOW TO#

How to Hide Desktop Icons on Mac OS X from Appearing Completely Instead, you’ll just see your desktop wallpaper. You can think of this kind of like disabling the desktop, because you can still actually save files and folders to the desktop, it’s just that the icons will not show up. This effectively hides all the icons from showing up on the Mac desktop only, but all of your files and stuff will still be accessible from elsewhere through the file system and Finder. If you decide you have too many icons on the desktop and maintaining the desktop is just too much to deal with, you can actually toggle a secret setting in Mac OS X to turn off the Mac desktop icons completely, thereby preventing them from being displayed at all.

#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC DOWNLOAD#

Inevitably, it can be hard to avoid since a lot of apps download things to the Desktop by default, we save things there, screenshots go there, it quickly becomes the generic catch-all location for documents and stuff that we’re working with.

#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC LICENSE#

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.Want to hide all desktop icons on a Mac? Desktop icon clutter can really impact workflow by overwhelming you with files and just too much stuff to look at. If you want to contribute to improve it, it will be with pleasure ! Image CreditsĮye Folder Yellow ( ) from icongeek26 ( )

#HIDE ICONS ON DESKTOP MAC ZIP FILE#

Just download the App zip file here : Screenshots This App cannot be allowed on the Mac App Store due to the necessary temporary exceptions required. This is a MacOSX App build with xCode using Swift 5.0 and temporary exceptions in order to handle System Events and Preferences panels events A small Mac OS App that allow you on Mac OS to show or hide your desktop icons with a single shortcut.

Hide icons on desktop mac