Hide Desktop Icons

People in online meetings often decide at the spur of the moment to share their screen with the rest of the attendees. If you share your screen, including the desktop or portions of the desktop, you may not want to have your desktop icons visible to everyone. 

Clear your desktop on a PC 

There is a quick and easy way to hide desktop icons on a PC. 

Right-click on any empty space on the desktop. 

In the resulting menu click View, then uncheck Show Desktop Icons. 

Take a few seconds to do this, and you will avoid showing your (potentially) cluttered desktop layout with others in the meeting! 

Clear your desktop on a Mac 

The process is similar on a Mac. Here is a screenshot of a messy Mac desktop: 

To clear most of the icons from the desktop, you create stacks of icons with all documents of the same type stacked on top of each other on the right side of the screen. 

Right-click anywhere on the desktop (you can hold the control key down and click to simulate a right-click). 

In the pop-up menu, select Use Stacks: 

The result looks something like this: 

Once you have shared your screen or taken a screenshot, you can unpack the stacks by reversing the process. Right-click on the desktop and select Use Stacks again (if stacks are in use there will be a checkmark here, so you effectively un-check Use Stacks). By selecting the same item again, the line is unchecked and the icons are spread over the desktop again.