How To Hide All Desktop Icons On Mac OS X

Your computer desktop is probably cluttered. It’s probably a mess, full of scattered files and folders. I used to spend time constantly tidying them (as I save a lot of stuff to the Desktop). These days, I use this handy trick to keep the icons hidden, so all I have to see is my desktop wallpaper image.

Clean up the Desktop by Hiding Desktop Icons

Navigate to Applications > Utilities and open Terminal.app

Type the following line, and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

After hitting enter, you’ll want to force quit and relaunch the Finder so that the changes take effect. Type this into the Terminal and press Enter:

killall Finder

The files that were on your Desktop still exist, they are now just hidden. You can navigate to your Desktop ‘folder’ via the Go menu in Finder, or using the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + D.

To reverse this and show the Desktop icons again, open the Terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

Again, force quit the Finder (it will automatically relaunch) and your icons will reappear on the desktop.