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Save Desktop icon positions

I

InsertCatchyNic

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2009
34
2
Is there a way for me to save my icon positions on my desktop? Every once in a while when I restart my computer my icons are auto sorted and I have to spend an eternity putting them back into their proper position. Is there an app out there that can save the current icon locations and then restore that if they get messed up somehow.

This has to also work with two displays.

When I was a windows user there is a great utility called Icon Restore, looking for something similar for the mac.
 
Try this

- Move com.apple.finder.plist in ~/Library/Preferences (put this location in Finder menu Go > Go to Folder) to the desktop
- Hold option key and right click Finder icon and Relaunch.

This will reset your desktop icons as well as Finder's other preferences, so if you want your preferences and icon positions back, move the plist file back and relaunch Finder again.

Then check out right click desktop and "Clean up by" and also Show view options (option key+J) to sort how you want the icons. You can also choose sort by none, like noteple suggested, and then select a group of icons and clean up by name.
 
Last edited:
I've got a free one. It's called Desktop Wrap and it's an AppleScript.

It uses a utility called Pashua to give it an interface of sorts. I created it back in the days of AppleScript Studio, but I don't want to pay fees to be an Apple developer because I don't do much of that anymore. You can use it to create an AppleScript that will sort your icons on the desktop by a rule. If you give the Script Editor and the Pashua applications permissions to write to your data volume in the Privacy & Security item in System Settings (you'll see obscure errors if you don't have that configured properly), you can create the custom script while running Desktop Wrap in Script editor. I keep it in the Script menu (enable that in Script Editor) and hold down the option key when selecting it to load it into a Script Editor window. There is another ancillary scripting addition you need in addition to Pashua, and you can read about those at my blog where the script is available in clear text.
 
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