Organise Your Desktop With Stacks

One way to clean up your Mac desktop (without having to do any actual filing!), but still keep your items organised is by using Desktop Stacks.

On MacOS, Stacks are groups of files. Not only can Stacks organise the items you already have on your desktop, it will automatically place new items into the relevant Stacks every time you save to your desktop - meaning that your desktop stays organised!

Turn on Mac Desktop Stacks

Here’s how to set up Stacks on your Mac:

• Click anywhere on your desktop.
• In the menu bar at the top, click on ‘View’.
• Then click on ‘Use Stacks’.
• As soon as you enable Stacks, you’ll see your icons move and your files placed into groups.
• To stop using Stacks, just reverse the process: click on your desktop, ‘View’, then deselect ‘Use Stacks’ by clicking on it.
  

Choose How to Group Stacks

The nice thing about using Stacks to stay organised is that you can group them in a way that makes sense to you:

• Kind – this places the same types of items in Stacks e.g. images, PDF files, screenshots etc.

• Date – you can choose from ‘Date Last Opened’, ‘Date Added’, ‘Date Modified’ or ‘Date Created’.

• Tags – if you use Tags to keep files and folders organised on your Mac, then you may like this option.
  

By default, Stacks are organised by Kind, but you can change this as follows:

• Click anywhere on your desktop.
  

• In the menu bar at the top, click on ‘View’.
  

• Then click on ‘Group Stacks By’ and select an option.

Browse, Expand and Collapse Stacks

Once you have set up Stacks, you can expand the Stack by clicking on it, and then double-clicking to open a file. In the first image below you can see a Stack labelled ‘Images’.

To collapse the Stack, click the Arrow (the icon with the ‘Images’ label in the second picture below).

Change the Appearance of Stacks

You can change the appearance of your desktop Stacks by increasing the size of the icons, moving the labels, adjusting the space between Stacks and more.

• Click anywhere on your desktop.

• In the menu bar at the top, click on ‘View’.

• Select ‘Show View Options’.

Browse, Expand & Collapse Stacks

Use the various sections of the window to change the appearance of your Stacks:

• ‘Stack By’ and ‘Sort By’ – choose how the Stacks are grouped or rearrange them in a particular order with your other icons.

• ‘Icon Size’ and ‘Grid Spacing’ – use the sliders to adjust the size of the icons and the spacing between them on the desktop.

• ‘Text Size’ and ‘Label Position’ – increase or decrease the size of the label text or choose to show the labels in a different position.

• ‘Show Item Info’ – to display more details for a Stack, such as the number of items within a Stack or sizes of images, check the box for ‘Show Item Info’.

• ‘Show Icon Preview’ – to display the first file in a Stack as the icon, check the box for ‘Show Icon Preview’.