This weekend a friend came over and marveled at how clean my desktop is compared to their own which was filled with icons, install files, web shortcuts, and files. I have a confession to make, my desktop isn’t nearly as tranquil as it looks. Here’s how you clean up that mess without actually having to do any of the work that comes with sorting and organizing those files, basically this is a digital way of sweeping them under a rug.
First, right click on your desktop and select View and uncheck “Show Desktop Icons”. Next, right click on your taskbar and choose “Toolbars”, then “New Toolbar”. On the dialog that pops up, just scroll up to the top of the tree and choose your desktop. Now you’ll have a link on your taskbar that works kind of like a right hand Start Menu, showing you all of the things on your Desktop. You can still drag things to your desktop, but you’ll only see them when clicking this new toolbar. Folders on your desktop branch out from this list, similar to how the Start Menu operates.
When it comes time to sort/organize/delete/rename the things that are on my desktop, I just hit Windows Key + E to open up Windows Explorer, and scroll up to “Desktop” at the top of the folder tree.