How to Hide Desktop Icons on Mac and Windows (2025)

You have a call in 2 minutes and your desktop looks like a crime scene

We've all been there. You're about to share your screen and you notice Resume_FINAL_v3.pdf sitting right next to vacation photos and some meme your friend sent you at 1am.

Not great.

Let me walk you through how to hide desktop icons on both Mac and Windows. I'll show you the manual way, and then what I actually do.

Hiding icons on Mac

Terminal method

Open Terminal and run:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop false

Then:

killall Finder

Icons gone. To bring them back, swap false for true and run both again.

Works fine. But nobody is opening Terminal before a Zoom call. Let's be real.

The drag-into-a-folder method

Select everything, right-click, move to a folder. Now you have to move them all back later. And you'll forget where half of them went.

Hiding icons on Windows 10 and 11

Right-click desktop. Go to View. Uncheck "Show desktop icons."

That's actually pretty easy. But your wallpaper is still that beach photo. Notifications are still popping up. Apps are still open everywhere. Icons are only one piece of the problem.

What I actually do

I got tired of doing 5 separate things before every call, so I built QuickPresent.

Press one button:

Icons hidden
Apps minimized
Wallpaper swapped
Audio muted
Notifications blocked

Call ends, press again. Everything back.

Works on Mac and Windows. Free trial, takes 30 seconds to set up.

When do you even need this?

Anytime someone else can see your screen. Zoom calls, Loom recordings, client demos, plugging your laptop into a projector. Basically if you screen share more than once a week, your desktop should be ready for it.

Quick comparison

Method	Time	Icons	Apps	Audio	Notifications
Mac Terminal	30 sec	Yes	No	No	No
Windows right-click	5 sec	Yes	No	No	No
QuickPresent	1 sec	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

If you only need to hide icons occasionally, the built-in way is fine. If you're sharing your screen daily, you need something better.

Download QuickPresent →

Keep reading

QuickPresent is available for Mac and Windows. See pricing · Setup guide