Action to Show/Hide desktop icons

Feature Requests
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1

Hi there,

I would love to configure a shortcut that toggles showing/hiding my desktop icons. Whenever I share my screen with colleagues, I would love to quickly hide all icons on my desktop.

This can be achieved with the following script:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop false
killall Finder

The only problem right now is that I have to assign two shortcuts executing shell commands, one to show and one to hide the icons.

2

If that's the only issue, you can use the "Cycle though multiple actions (on repeated trigger)" helper action. It allows you to execute different stuff when triggering a trigger multiple times.

3

Thanks a lot for your quick reply, this is brilliant! :smile: Wasn't aware of this helper action.

This solved my problem, although it might sitll be nice to have show/hide desktop icons as a predefined action - it offers some privacy in times of remote work and lots of screen sharing :blush:

4

IMO, a more reliable solution would be to invert the current desktop state by extending your script a bit:

state=$(defaults read com.apple.finder CreateDesktop)
((state ^= 1))
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop $state
killall Finder

And this way you won't have to assign a second shortcut

2 Likes
5

Awesome, thanks!

6

So helpful, thanks!!