How To Organize Desktop Apps Mac

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A lot of Mac users find that the desktop is a convenient place to store shortcut icons, files and folders. If you don’t keep your desktop it organized, it can get quite cluttered really fast.

Pagico makes similar “be productive and stay organized” proclamations, but actually delivers on those promises in a way few Mac apps do. Mac Life Pagico's strength is its ability to link objects, contacts and projects. Use folders and rules to organize your inbox on a Mac. Create a folder. Select your inbox or another folder you want to work with.

Not only the cluttered desktop will look messy but also it will overwhelm you.

The purpose of this article is to teach you to make your desktop cleaner because it is important to have a clean and organized desktop:

I am asking about Acrobat and your support/forum pages are very confusing, hard to navigate. I have a full CC subscription and want to use Acrobat and it is not allowing me to use some of the key features (e.g. Organize pages). Here’s how to organize your Mac desktop for maximum efficiency. Decluttering your Mac desktop. Using Stacks and grouping; Sorting desktop items; Changing the sizes and spacing; Showing more details; Using Stacks and grouping. Before you make small changes to your desktop like changing the icon size or spacing, it’s a good idea to get it in. Fences Automatically organize your desktop shortcuts icons and running tasks. DeskScapes Personalize your desktop background with animated pictures and video. Multiplicity Connect multiple PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Groupy Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop. Organize your desktop like a Mac expert with Spaces. My workflow is easier to organize. It lets me separate my apps instead of cramming them into one desktop where they are layered on top.

  • The messy desktop will impact your productivity negatively
  • It may slow your Mac down and may cause freezing, this is because files and folders on your desktop use a lot more system resources.

See also: Screenshots Not Working On Mac, Fix

Use Stacks

You can now organize your desktop automatically with Stacks if your Mac is running macOS Mojave or later (e.g., Catalina). Stacks will organize your desktop instantly if you turn in on. Stacks put files and folders into stacks. Here is how you can turn on Stacks on your Mac:

  • Go to Finder
  • Click View
  • Click Use Stacks

Or alternatively, on your desktop, right-click or control-click on your desktop and then click Use Stacks.

By default, once you turn this on, you Mac will create Stacks the group files by Kind. Everything will appear on the right side of your screen. However, you can change how these groups are stacked. Here is how:

  • Go to Finder and click View
  • Click Group Stacks By
  • There are many options, choose one.

The stacks options are:

  • Kind (default option)
  • Date last opened
  • Date added
  • Date modified
  • Date created
  • Tags (if you are already using tags to organize your desktop), see the next section below.

To view files in Stacks, just click the Stack and it will expand, then double click the file to open it, when you click again, it will collapse back down.

See also: Relocated Items Folder

Use tags

You can use tags to organize your files and folders on your Mac. There are several ways to tag a file or folder with colors or keywords. The easiest way to tag an item on your desktop, simply right-click (control-click) and find the Tags section and choose a color. Note that you can add multiple tags (colors) to any file or folder.

To remove a tag from a file or folder, again right-click (or control-click) and then click the tag that you want to remove. It will be unselected.

You can also customize your tags. You can add custom tags. Here is how you can do that:

  • Go to Finder
  • Click Finder (top menu bar)
  • Click Preferences
  • Click the Tags tab

Now you can add custom tags by clicking the plus (+) icon. Then you can drag the new tag to the favorite tags area so that you can use this new tag quickly when you want to. You can also use the minus (-) icon to remove tags. You can here edit the current tags also.

Use Finder Preferences

You may adjust your Finder preferences to organize your desktop. Go to Finder and click Finder > Preferences. There are four types of preferences:

  • General: You can choose what items to be shown on the desktop
  • Tags: You may create custom tags
  • Sidebar: You can choose what items to be shown in the sidebar
  • There are also advanced options, like showing all file extensions etc.


Use iCloud

This will let you view your files and folders everywhere. Here is how:

  • On your Mac, click the Apple menu
  • Click System Preferences
  • Click Apple ID
  • Click iCloud
  • Find the iCloud Drive and click the Options button
  • Make sure that the Desktop & Documents Folders option is selected.

See also: Dock Not Working?

Managing a huge gallery and organizing photos is a tricky business, even if you’re generally tidy, so it’s always a good idea to use some help. Especially when there’s software out there designed specifically to deal with an overload of pictures.

The only trouble with professional photo organizing software is that, much like any photo equipment, it’s painfully expensive. In this article we’ll suggest tools that tame your giant photo gallery without leaving a hole in your pocket.

Best photo manager apps for Mac reviewed

RatingNameFeaturesInfo
1Gemini 2 Best at keeping your photos cleaned up where they live.Link
2PhotosOrganize your photos by album, people or places.Link
3MylioSyncs and organizes your photo library across all devices: Apple, Android, or Windows.Link

1. Gemini 2: The duplicate photo finder

The first step to getting your photos organized is to remove all of the duplicate or similar-looking images. Chances are when you take a picture, you don’t take just one; you take 15. All from different angles, maybe even with different poses. But rarely do you need or want all of them, so now they’re just taking up space on your Mac.

How To Organize Desktop Apps Macbook

The easiest way to get rid of those files is to get a duplicate photo finder, Gemini 2. It scans your whole gallery and locates the duplicate or similar photos. Gemini 2 lets you quickly review and choose which pictures you want to delete. But the app also uses AI to select the best version of each image, and it will get rid of all of the copies with just one click of the Smart Cleanup button.

2. Photos: Best photo organizer on Mac

Here’s the biggest secret to good photo organization: master Photos. You might be thinking: seriously, is a native Apple app really any good? And you’d be surprised how much it is.

Since macOS Sierra, Photos has been getting makeovers and new features. In macOS Mojave, the app lets you organize content just by dragging-and-dropping it, and with Smart Albums, you can instantly group photos by date, camera, and even the person in them. At this point, it’s just a really good piece of photo management software.

3. Mylio: A free photo manager app

Kinde mac app scrolling. If you’ve been meaning to consolidate your photos in one place for years, Mylio will help you do just that. When you first start using the app, it offers to look for your photos on the current device, on an external drive, and even on your Facebook.

Organize My Desktop

Once all the photos you’ve taken in your lifetime are imported, Mylio organizes into a variety of views. The coolest one is Calendar, showing you photo collections on an actual calendar. That way, you’ll quickly find the photos from your son’s first birthday, even if you forgot how you named the folder. Plus, Mylio offers a free mobile app, so you can access your photo library wherever you are.

4. Adobe Lightroom: Cloud-based photo editor and organizer

While Adobe Lightroom is probably best known as a powerful picture editor, it’s also loaded with tons of tools to help keep your photos organized. It stores your pics in the Adobe Cloud so you can access all of your albums and folders on another computer, phone, or even an internet browser.

One of the great things about Lightroom is that it makes non-destructive edits to your photos. So, you can revert back to the original image at any time, and you don’t need to create a duplicate just to preserve your picture.

5. Luminar: Organize and view pictures without importing them

If you have your pictures saved in various folders across your computer, then Luminar is the app you’ll want to check out. It shows you all of your photos without having to import any of them into a library. So you can start using Luminar in almost no time.

6. Adobe Bridge: Free photo library manager

You might be wondering why Adobe would make two separate photo managers. Aside from Adobe Bridge being free for everyone, it serves an entirely different purpose. Bridge is solely an image and asset manager. Unlike Lightroom, it doesn’t have any editing functionality.

So, what’s the point then? Where Bridge really shines is if you’re using other Adobe products, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. You can store and organize all of your pictures in Bridge and then open them in any Adobe program without creating a duplicate or searching through the thousands of files on your computer. Plus, Bridge offers a robust search tool making it a breeze to find the exact image you’re looking for.

Final word on photo management on Mac

Organize Desktop Icons

There are basically two things you need to remember to bring order into your photographing life:

  1. Before you get to organization and management, be sure to unclutter your photo library. The easiest way to do it is with a duplicate finder, such as Gemini 2. Otherwise you'll be rummaging around in thousands of photos you don't even need.
  2. Photos, the native photo manager on a Mac, can accomplish everything you need to make organizing photos into groups and categories easy.
  3. Third-party tools can provide you with added functionality that’s missing in native macOS tools, like calendar view or managing photos right in the Finder.

Now that you know all the secrets to photo organization, Mac photography shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive. Not when you’ve got the right tricks up your sleeve.

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