Basics4Mac - Keeping your Desktop Tidy

Organizing your temporary files

Desktop View Options
Click to see a larger image

Is your Desktop covered with icons? It is easy to save everything to your Desktop and before you know it you have a huge jumble of icons and you can't find anything.

Many of the files that you create are only useful for a certain period of time. Such a file might be a travel confirmation or a memo you are working on or components of a larger project. The Desktop is a good place to save such temporary files. But to keep your Desktop under control, every so often you need to either trash these temporary files or move them to a more permanent location like the Documents folder.

Beside keeping things tidy, there is a quirk in Mac OS X that makes your computer run a little slower for each file on your Desktop.

Try these actions to give your Desktop a makeover:

Only save files that are likely to be temporary to your Desktop. If you know that you will need to keep a file, save it in your Documents folder.
Right-click on the desktop and choose "Show View Options." Check "Show item info", Show icon preview", and "Keep arranged by Name." Select Label position to be "Right." These view options will snap your icons into an organized list and show you more information about the files without needing to open them.
Go to Finder Preferences and to the General section. Uncheck all the "Show these items on the Desktop" checkboxes. Your hard drives, CD and connected servers are all shown in the Finder Sidebar so they don't need to be on the desktop as well.
Create a folder called "_Desktop Items" on your Desktop. (That is an underscore character at the beginning of the filename. That will insure that your _Desktops items folder will always be at the top of the list of files.

My Made Over Desktop
Click to see a larger image

Now whenever the desktop starts to look a little crowded, do a little sorting:

The files you don't need anymore, drag to the Trash.
The files you need to keep, drag to your Documents folder
If you aren't sure or just want to keep a file in limbo, drag it to the _Desktop Items folder for later sorting. (Danger: If all you do is drag all the files off of your desktop and into the _Desktop Items folder, then all you have done is moved your mess from one place to another. Use the _Desktop Items folder sparingly.)

With a little work, you can keep the thousands of files you accumulate over time under control.

Related Items: Finder | Desktop

Keeping your Desktop Tidy | 2 comments |

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Keeping your Desktop Tidy

Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 28 2010

Hi Chris,
I want to delete temp files that kinda get hidden in the hardrive. 4ex. when I copy a non protected CD or DVD on my Dell I know there are temp files that I hv to look for and manually delete after I burn what I want. I can tell from the "pie" image on my HDrive that there is more space used up. But on my Mac I can't really tell cause there is no such "pie" image (something I kinda miss using a Mac)...by pie image I mean the circle that is either all pink when free or used when blue..telling me how much space I have or don't have on my HD. Make sense?
Anyway, how do I find those temp files on my Mac, is that what Roxio converted files are? After I finish using Toast and they ask me if I want to delete those files?
Sorry to be confusing...hope you can help.
Trying to clean up more space on my Mac HD.
Cheers
alaskamama

Reply to This

Authored by: chrisb on Sunday, November 28 2010

Hi -

If I understand you properly, you are using Toast to copy CDs and DVDs.

I haven't used Toast in many many years, but I do know that it would have to read the entire disc in to a temp file and then create the copy disc from that.

If Toast is giving you the option to delete those temp files, then that is the best way to keep them from accumulating.

To find ones already there, I have a couple of things you might try. Again, I haven't used Toast in years so these are just general suggestions.

1) Go through Toast's preferences to see if there is a way to set the location of the temp files. If so, go to that path in the Finder.

2) Search the Finder for a folder called Toast or Roxio, The temp files might be in there.

3) Look in [your user name]/Library/Application Support. Some apps store things there.

4) Download Grand Perspective from http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/grandperspective.html it will help you track down large files on your HD.

Hope this helps

Chris