Clean up Your Computer Desktop Once and for All
We all spend a lot of time staring at our computer’s desktop, between opening programs and switching between browser windows, and it can often become a dumping ground for all sorts of miscellaneous content: shortcuts, downloads, screenshots, documents, archives and more. more.
Because it’s so easy to access, everything from meme templates to financial reports can end up on your desktop, but over time you may find it difficult to find (or even lose) the files you need that are stored there. Moreover, your desktop can become quite unsightly if your chosen wallpaper is obscured by icons.
If you feel like your desk is too cluttered to use, here are some ideas for cleaning it up. Just like a tidy office or home, a tidy desk can improve your mood and productivity.
General desktop tips
One way to declutter your desktop is to simply start deleting everything you no longer need, which may be more than you think. Remember that the Recycle Bin in Windows or the Trash Bin in macOS act as a safety net in case you delete something you later realize you actually need.
If you are sure that you need the files, folders and shortcuts accumulated on your desktop, you can move them to another location by dragging them into other folders (or using the Ctrl+X/Cmd+X and Ctrl+V keys). /Cmd+V – cut and paste keyboard shortcuts). Organizing files isn’t the most fun thing to do on a desktop or laptop, but it can save you a significant amount of time and stress.
What can be helpful in terms of keeping your desktop tidy is to create one folder on it for temporary files: it’s still easily accessible from the desktop, but it means the screen isn’t covered in thumbnail icons. Only store something there if you know you’ll only need it for a short period of time—for example, an installer downloaded from the Internet, or an image that you’ll edit and then download.
Then, every now and then, delete everything in the folder—you don’t have to go through files one by one because you know you wouldn’t keep anything in there if it was really important. For important files, be sure to take an extra second or two to save them somewhere other than your desktop.
Windows desktop
You get several tools built into Windows for keeping your desktop organized (and for organizing the windows above it using layout snaps ). Right-click on an empty area of your desktop, select View , and you can align your desktop icons to a grid (with some manual control), automatically arrange them in a grid (without manual control), or hide them altogether (which is true, bury them, rather than solving the problem of a dirty desktop).
This should help you create a tidier desktop, especially if you combine it with spending a few minutes deleting and moving files. Of course, you can move files lying on your desktop to one of the folders on your desktop by simply dragging them over the folder thumbnail.
Right-click on an empty area of your desktop, select Sort by , and you can rearrange the order of files on your desktop: you can sort them by name , size , item type , or date modified . If you want to delete files from your desktop and want to know which ones are the largest or oldest, this might help.
As you’d expect from Windows, there are plenty of third-party tools to help you improve the look of your desktop. One tool that is definitely worth checking out is Portals . It is free to use, although some features require a license key: the developer only asks for a voluntary donation for the license key, but pay a reasonable amount if you can afford it and find the program useful.
Portals place windows in different folders on your desktop, so you can easily drag and drop files you want to keep into specific folders while deleting others. These windows can be customized in style and position, and even adding just a couple of them can make a big difference in the organization of your desktop.
There’s also Fences from Stardock, which will cost you $9.99 a year but includes a free trial. With Fences, everything stays on your desktop, but all your icons are sorted into more convenient floating windows—not unlike the folders you can create on your smartphone home screens.
MacOS desktop
Right-click on an empty part of the macOS desktop to reveal a list of options for organizing your desktop icons more conveniently: Clean Up organizes everything into a clean grid, while Clean By lets you set some order for your icons. grid (icons can be sorted, for example, by date or name).
These are one-time sorting options that still give you some flexibility, but the Sort By menu gives you a more rigid structure for your desktop in the future. Files can be organized by a variety of criteria, from file type to file size, and you can enable the Snap to Grid option if you want everything captured in rows and columns.
Select “Use Stacks” from the context menu, and macOS will group files on your desktop into virtual stacks (or piles): all the images on top of each other, all the PDFs on top of each other, and so on. It’s a quick and easy way to keep everything organized on your desktop, although it does make it a little harder to see what files you have.
Click on a stack to expand it and manage files individually. If you select Show View Options from the context menu, you can switch to stacks based on dates or tags attached to files, as well as adjust a number of other useful options for organizing your desktop, including text size, icon size, and grid spacing.
Your macOS desktop should look a lot neater now, but you can also get help from a third-party utility or two if you need it. Spotless is one of the best programs in this area: it can organize files across macOS, not just the desktop, and uses rules and automation to keep everything organized on your behalf.
For example, music files can be automatically placed in one folder on the desktop, and document files in another. Actions taken by Spotless can be reviewed and approved, or you can exit the program to continue working behind the scenes. Spotless will cost you $24.99, although you can try it out for free for a week.