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Do you Hide Desktop Icons on your Mac and windows often? You might have to give a presentation on your Mac and don’t want people to see what’s on your desktop or in your Finder. There could be too many files and folders on your desktop, making it look bad, or there could be private information that shouldn’t be seen by the public. No matter why you want to hide files, folders, and desktop icons on your Mac, you probably want to do it quickly. This tutorial shows you how to hide files, folders, and icons on your Mac’s desktop and in Finder.
How to Hide Desktop Icons on Mac
Using Terminal
- Launch Terminal on your Mac. (Use Spotlight Search to find and open it.)
- Now, enter the following command:
- defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
- After entering the first command, copy and paste the second command given below: killall Finder
- Next up, hit the Enter key. Voila! Check out the desktop; there won’t be any files on the screen.
Use Finder
- To start with, just go to the Finder option on your Mac, which is on the top left corner. Click on it to get its context menu and choose the “Preferences” option.
- This will open the Finder Preferences tab on the screen. From here, you need to go to the “General” section, if you aren’t there already.
- Here, you can view an option for “Show these items on the desktop“. Just disable (uncheck) the feature for all the options here like hard disks, external disks, etc.
How to Hide Desktop Icons on Windows
Use the Local Group Policy Editor
- Press Win + R to open the Run command dialog box.
- Type gpedit.msc and press Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.
- Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Desktop.
- Double-click the Hide and disable all items on the desktop option on the right-hand side pane.
- In the next window, select Enabled, click Apply, and then click OK.
Use the Registry Editor
- Press Win + R to open the Run command dialog box.
- Type regedit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Policies > Explorer.
- Next, right-click on a blank area on the right-hand side pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Why you Want to Hide Desktop Icons
Confidentiality and safety
One reason a person might want to cache desktop files is to keep their information safe. A report from the New York Post showed that 50% of Americans would rather clean their whole house than spend an hour or more cleaning up their desks. The fact that the average American hasn’t cleaned up their desktop in more than three years shows how vulnerable information is. People won’t be able to see what’s on your computer if you hide your desktop files. This keeps your personal files safe.
Keeping things clean and in order
Your desktop is your digital desk. A clean desk is good for your mental health in many ways, and the same is true for a computer desktop. By hiding the folders, the screen stays clean and organized. You can also quickly find and open your favorite folder by using the search function on your computer (for Windows users).
FAQs
Right-click (or press and hold) the desktop, point to View, and then select Show desktop icons to add or clear the check mark. Note: Hiding all the icons on your desktop doesn’t delete them, it just hides them until you choose to show them again.
“Deleted files or folders keep coming back” can also be caused by a virus or malicious software. Microsoft Safety Scanner works as a malware removal tool that can be used to scan your system for viruses or other kinds of malware and then remove them.
Your desktop icons may be hidden. To view them, right-click the desktop, select View, and then select Show desktop icons. To add icons to your desktop such as This PC, Recycle Bin and more: Select Start , open Settings , then under Personalization , select Themes .