Desktop loaded in memory? Clean APP

[macmesser]

I just heard that one should keep the desktop uncluttered because Mac OS will take anything on it and put it in RAM. A lot of stuff on the desktop can therefore slow the system by consuming RAM unnecessarily. This was interesting news for me as I am not the tidiest person in the world and have a messy desktop which generally contains tons of things, from saved web archives and text clippings to gigabyte sized folders of working image batches. There is a free app called Clean which will periodically sweep the desktop and place everything it finds in a dated folder in ~/Documents. The app allows the skipping of labeled items, so one could create an alias of this folder, name it Desktop Sweep, label it and put it on the desktop. If I did this would the OS load the contents of the aliased folder or would just stuff actually on the desktop get loaded?

Can anyone speak to this OS feature of loading desktop into RAM and how it works? Would also love to hear from users of Clean. BTW, I am trying it (find in App Store) and it seems to work quite well and offer a valuable organizational tool for free.

 

[Weaselboy]

Can anyone speak to this OS feature of loading desktop into RAM and how it works?

I don't know where you read that, but it is not true. Items on the Desktop are not loaded or preloaded in RAM. The Desktop is just another folder in the users folder.

 

[macmesser]

I don't know where you read that, but it is not true. Items on the Desktop are not loaded or preloaded in RAM. The Desktop is just another folder in the users folder.

Thanks for setting me straight! Heard it from a friend who generally knows his stuff. Clean app still helps organizing a mess so I'm keeping that. I'll be passing the word to my friend.