Show and hide desktop icons
The desktop is a useful place to store files that you’re temporarily working on, and some programs add shortcuts there so you can launch them more quickly. However, this isn’t a great way to work because your desktop can quickly become cluttered. It can also slow down your computer because every time you go back to the desktop – even if you’re just in transit between programs – your computer needs to make sure everything is updated. If you instead store those files in a folder that’s not opened frequently, it will only need to do this from time to time.
There is a workaround, however. As you’ll know from navigating through File Explorer, the desktop has its own folder, and it’s this that is displayed every time you switch back to the desktop. By setting Windows not to show icons on the desktop, you can still drag and drop files there so they’re easy to find via Explorer.
To hide your desktop icons, right-click an empty space on the desktop, hover over View and uncheck the option to ‘Show desktop icons’ on the menu. The icons will disappear, leaving a much more focused working environment. To find the files they relate to, open an Explorer window then click Desktop in the sidebar. If you can’t see this option, it’s probably hidden, so click the chevron (>) to the left of ‘This PC’ to reveal it.
For the best of both worlds – hiding your icons from the desktop but not having to navigate to them through Explorer – right-click the taskbar and hover over Toolbars, then click Desktop on the menu. You’ll see a new Desktop button appear on the taskbar, with a
double-arrow (>>) icon to the right
( 1 in our screenshot below left). Click this to reveal a scrollable menu of all the files and shortcuts saved on your desktop 2 .
For deeper control over which icons are shown on the desktop, rather than hiding the icons altogether, open Settings (press Windows key+i) and click Personalisation followed by Themes. Scroll down and click ‘Desktop icon settings’, then tick the boxes next to the options you want, including ‘User’s files’, ‘Computer’ and Recycle Bin (see screenshot above).