Goodbye Desktop

If you want to stop anything appearing on your Mac’s Desktop, but want to keep files in the ~/Desktop directory, open Terminal and run the following:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool FALSE ; killall Finder

After that you won’t see any icons on your Desktop—no files, no folders, no disks; just the pretty picture.

To reverse the process, run the command again, replacing FALSE with TRUE.

I have been running Camouflage forever to do just this looking for an alternative. And here it is. Commence party.