Cheat your way to a cleaner desktop

When I ran into AJ’s entry entitled “View My Desktop,” I found out there was a meme spreading amongst local bloggers that provided a glimpse into their workstation desktops — wallpaper, icons, widgets, and all. There were some who had neat, clutter–free desktops, while others had their wallpaper barely viewable with all the icons strewn around. Much like mine, before:

Markku's desktop, before.

No, this is not an entry for gloating about a Mac. In fact, that isn’t even a Mac, it’s good ol’ Mac–pretending Windows XP with a custom theme/shellstyle called “BW,” paired with the default wallpaper from Mac OS X Leopard. Look at the badly organized state of my desktop; I almost couldn’t find what I need without looking closely. It is a struggle getting rid of every file and icon especially with Firefox’s preference of placing downloaded files right on the desktop. Every few days, all possible icon spots on the imaginary grid get filled and I while away my time inspecting which files I can delete. Which may be why I can hardly do any work, or at least that’s the way I’d like to believe.

With a little work and research though, I discovered a cheat to a cleaner desktop, producing this:

Markku's desktop, after.

A cheat? Yes, I call it a cheat because simply put, it is! Thanks to a nifty little app called Iconoid,” I can pretend to be one organized cool dude with no icons on my wannabe–a–mac desktop.

The icons are still there, the app just automatically hides them after a few seconds, a preference you can set in its configuration options. A click on the bare desktop shows my icons and files, taking me back to my cluttered electronic reality. Just long enough for me to click on what I need though, then the icons are gone again! The good thing about this, you don’t need to bother yourself with all the clutter until you need them. Web browsing or hacking away in a text editor, your desktop will stay clean and virtually, though artificially, clutter free. Now you can pretend to do real work.

But work’s still not getting done. Maybe I need one of those newly updated Apple MacBooks after all?

11 Responses

  1. I was SO ready to get jealous of your Leopard desktop no matter how cluttered it is only to find out that.. it isn’t Leopard haha ๐Ÿ˜‰

    I’m super OC when it comes to my desktop. Only my dock should be there and my HD folder, plus occasional torrent downloads and documents which should make me read. Aside from that, I have to dump them all to the finder.

    This Iconoid thing is cool. Haha if I was still in Windows I’d probably use that. And yes, you need those spiffy MacBooks ๐Ÿ˜€ I think everyone needs em.

  2. Nice applications…. nice article. I think its one post closer to buying and justifying a Mac. He he he.

    Bili na kasi ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. @Juice: So we have a mac user here! ๐Ÿ™‚ I’m not sure if there’s an Iconoid–equivalent for the mac, but I think you have lots of other productivity apps made only for it. Surely I’ll get my hands on a MacBook soon. ๐Ÿ˜‰

    @Ade: You’ll like it, try it!

    @Juned: Hehehe!

  4. I, too have icons as cluttered as yours. What I do is hide the desktop icons. I right click on the desktop then Choose Arrange icons then Uncheck Show Desktop icons. Now my icons are gone.

  5. I always overlook that trick Dino! I think Iconoid’s advantage though is that it allows for quicker access to the icons, and just for a brief interval. But the windows–native trick requires no downloads or installations at all. ๐Ÿ™‚

  6. http://appleweblog.com/2010/10/tu-mac-se-ha-vuelto-lento-prueba-lo-siguiente-ii
  7. http://ur-ve.com/?p=10837

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