← All tips

Tidy a chaotic desktop with Stacks

One command sweeps every loose file into neat piles by kind, and keeps doing it for the new ones.

A desktop with sixty screenshots scattered across it becomes a few tidy piles in one command. Choose View → Use Stacks, press ⌃ + ⌘ + 0, or click the desktop with two fingers and choose Use Stacks.

Files group themselves by kind — images in one pile, PDFs in another. Click a stack to expand it, and click its down arrow to collapse it again. Better still, swipe left or right on a pile with two fingers to flick through what is inside without expanding anything.

The point is that it keeps working: new files that land on the desktop join the right pile by themselves, so the mess does not come back next week.

If kind is not how you think, View → Group Stacks By also groups by date or by Finder tags.


Related tips