I create a lot of video demos that make it a pain when I have my personal icons to documents, folders, and other content I don't really want to have posted all over the Internet.
Here is how to do it:
Hide Desktop Icons
Launch Terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
Kill the Finder so that it relaunches:
killall Finder
Files are now discretely hidden in home folder’s “Desktop” directory. To reverse, open Terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
Kill the Finder so that it relaunches and they are back.
If you want to automate these into a single click of your mouse button, just put this into a file, make it executable, create an alias, and drop the alias file onto your task bar. One for icons on and one for icons off:
Now you can clean your desk for screencasts and video capturing and put it all back when you are done by clicking on the files!
#!/bin/bash
# 1. copy this code to file iconson.command
# 2. make executable with 'chmod +x iconson.command
# 3. make alias file and drop onto menu bar
#
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
killall Finder
#!/bin/bash
# 1. copy this code to file iconsoff.command
# 2. make executable with 'chmod +x iconson.command
# 3. make alias file and drop onto menu bar
#
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
killall Finder
Now you can clean your desk for screencasts and video capturing and put it all back when you are done by clicking on the files!