We all have our fair share of clutter on the desktop. Lately, I have moved over to the minimalistic demographic. Minimalism is a technique in itself where you employ the very meaning to everything in your life. From desktop to your room, from workspaces to websites. Here are a few pointers to keep your desktop simple and minimal.
1. Delete unwanted program shortcuts
While installing new programs, its common thing to see a desktop shortcut created during installation. One way to easily weed out is to check which programs were the least used.
2. Use Fences
Courtesy : tech4teens
I have been using Fences since it first came out and its a damn excellent software. Fences can group your icons with a couple of clicks, hide all of your icons with a double click anywhere on the desktop and much more! Check out the complete list of features on their website.
3. Use a quick-launch app..for apps
Windows
I love and hate the Mac OS dock for quite a number of reasons. Most of the times its a real treat, other times it feels obstructive. Windows users can get a taste of the Mac OS dock with the help of ObjectDock and RocketDock.
I would advise Windows 7 users to NOT use docks as you can now simply pin programs to the taskbar.
Mac
For an operating system that already has a superb dock and a fantastic spotlight what could improve it? Quicksilver of course. Quicksilver can replace the default cmd+space function if you like to and take over the spotlight’s function completely and be more functional at the same time. Spotlight+steroids=Quicksilver. Here’s a link to LifeHacker’s guide to Quicksilver.
4. Use a “junk” folder
Whenever I download files from the internet, they go into a “Junk” folder on my desktop which I later sort out to its correct place. Stuff like setup files, images, pdf’s, etc. You can create any number of custom folders, obviously, and keep your desktop void of stray files.
5. Don’t keep applications that run on startup
If you have applications like chat clients or torrent clients that run automatically at startup, you can remove them from your desktop if suppose you never close them down till you power off your computer.
6. Use search for those mildly used applications
Please note that this applies to users running on Vista/OS X or later. Start menu and spotlight search are not only great at finiding documents, but also applications. I don’t use Chrome as much as Firefox, so instead what I do is just press the win key or cmd+space on Mac and key in “Chrome”. Laptop users in particular will already be using the hell out of the search functions both the OS’es offer.
7. Use keyboard shortcuts
If you really want to have the bare minimum on your desktop, you can have application shortcuts on your quick launch. Simply drag-n-drop the applications you want to your quick launch bar (or pin it to taskbar if you are on Win7), once done just press win+(app position#).
For example, I here have Libraries and Firefox pinned next to my start menu. If I want to launch Libraries I would press win+1, for Firefox – win+2 and so on..
So there you go, quite a handful of tips to clear all that clutter. And here’s my desktop for the curious.