work smarter with files

Stack your files to keep things in handy order

One of macOS Mojave’s headline features is Stacks, a way of organising files automatically on the desktop.

The idea is to reduce clutter on the desktop by stacking similar files on top of each other. It’s different to the stacks you can add to the Dock, by dragging a folder to the right end. When turned on, if you save or move a file to the desktop, it’s added to the relevant stack.

By default, stacks are organised by file type. So, for example, image files are stacked together, as are videos, and text documents. However, you can choose different criteria, such as the date files were last opened.

Files in a stack can be viewed together using Quick Look, or worked on using Quick Actions at the bottom of Finder’s Preview pane (View > Show Preview). And if you’d rather move the files in a stack to a folder, you can do that quickly too.

When you turn off the feature, stacked files return to their original positions on the desktop.