How To Hide Desktop Icons On Mac

The majority of people keep their desktop clean and tidy and manage their desktop space very well, while some people’s desktop is cluttered with files and folders. It’s hard for these people to hide their desktop items from others in certain occasions.

For example, if you often do presentations on your Mac, or your work requires you to show your screen to other people, it will be hard for you to hide your desktop overwhelmed with files and folders from your colleagues. Whatever the reason is, you might be looking for a way to the messy files and folders from your desktop to make it neat and clean.

Making your desktop neat and clean for certain occasions, below are some tips to hide your desktop icons on the Mac operating system.

Tips to Hide Your Desktop Icons on Mac

Below are some methods that will help you to hide your desktop icons quickly;

Hide Desktop Icons on Mac Using Terminal

Mac allows its users to hide desktop icons using the terminal. Mac terminal works much similar to that of Windows Command Prompt. Mac users just need to type some commands to the terminal and to run it to entirely proper operation.

If you know the correct commands, you just need to type them accurately and can do almost everything on your Mac. If you want to hide your Mac desktop icons, then you just need to follow below easy steps;

First of all, you are required to have access to the terminal on your Mac. For this purpose, just navigate to the Spotlight and locate the Terminal option. But before that, make sure that you are login as an administrator to run the command.
When the terminal command is loaded, you need to type below command and then press the Enter key from your keyboard.

Defaults write com.apple.finder Createdesktop –bool false

After you finished typing the above command, now simply type killall Finder and then press the Enter key from the keyboard.

This command will hide all the desktop icons on your Mac in one go and make it neat and clean. This simple command will work on almost all Mac operating system versions.

How To Display the Hidden Desktop Icons Again Using Terminal?

If you ever want to show your hidden desktop icons again on your Mac, you just need to type the following command again;

First of all, launch the terminal from your Mac.
Type the command “Defaults write com.apple. Finder Createdesktop –bool true; Killall Finder” without quotes.
After you have typed the above command in your Mac terminal, simply press the Enter key from the keyboard.

This command will display the icons you have hide earlier on your Mac desktop again.

Hide Desktop Icons on Mac Using HiddenMe App

If you don’t like the method as mentioned above to hide your desktop icons on Mac or find it hard and looking for any other method, which is more comfortable, then you can make use of an app to do the job for you. Mac offers an app to hide your desktop icons on Mac using an app known as HiddenMe, which has the ability and allows you to hide and unhide desktop icons on your Mac comfortably.

The app is available in the Mac App Store, and you can download it for free. Below is a step-by-step guide of how to use the app to hide the icons on your Mac.

First of all, go to the Mac App Store and type HiddenMe in the search box.
When you see the app, click on the Download option, and it will begin downloading.
After the downloading of the app is completed, install the app on your Mac.
When the installation of the app is finished, you will see a circle icon in the menu bar.
Click on that icon, and you will see an option saying Hide Desktop Icons.
Click on that option, and it will hide all the icons from your Mac desktop.

How to Unhide Desktop Icons Using HiddenMe App?

If you want to unhide your desktop icons on your Mac desktop while using HiddenMe app, you just need to follow the below steps;

Click on the circle icon located in the menu bar of your Mac.
You will see an option stating Show Desktop Icon.
Click on that icon, and it will show all your desktop icons on your Mac desktop.

If you think it is not quick enough to hide and unhide your Mac desktop icons, you can add a keyboard shortcut from the app’s menu to make this process much faster.

Desktop Stacks in macOS Mojave to Make Your Desktop Neat and Clean

If you want to hide your desktop icons on your Mac for just making it look clean and neat, then there is another method that you can use. macOS Mojave introduced a new feature known as Desktop Stacks to Finder, which will make sure that your Mac desktop looks cleaner by combining the files of the same type together.

All you have to do is;

Open the Finder from your Mac.
Click on View option.
Now click on the Use Stacks option
That is it

Alternatively, you can use your keyboard shortcut key to enable Desktop Stacks by pressing Ctrl+Command+O keys.

Conclusion

We hope you have understood all the tips as mentioned earlier to keep your Mac desktop neat and clean by hiding icons on your desktop. Let us know if you find this article helpful in the comment section. If you have any ideas regarding how to hide desktop icons on Mac, you can share it with us.

FAQ

Below are some most asked questions by multiple users;

Q: How do you hide desktop files and folders on Mac desktop?

Ans: To hide desktop icons on Mac, you can install a third-party app known as HiddenMe. Upon launching the app from the menu bar, just click on Hide Desktop Icons.