DeskMat 1.0
I have a new app out that lets you sweep things under the rug – virtually: DeskMat for Mac.
With DeskMat, you cover the mess of files and folders on your Desktop with a single click – and show them again in just the same way.
It makes for clean streams, screen sharing, and distraction-free work!
By default, it shows a button on your screens’ Desktops that you can click to toggle the Desktop cover. But you can also move it to your menu bar, use a keyboard shortcut, or have it trigger automatically.
[…]
DeskMat can automatically cover your Desktops when specific apps are running, or come to the foreground.
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DeskMat can automatically cover your Desktops when you activate specific Focus modes.
This is a little behind-the-scenes recap of the app’s inception.
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Now, there’s this “neat” API on macOS that, on first glance, appears to be made for this:
NSWorkspace.shared.desktopImageURL(for: ).But it’s completely useless.
Maybe it actually worked for a short while after its introduction with macOS 10.6, but it’s obvious nobody at Apple ever took another glance at it again after that, ever.
Instead of returning the URL to the currently used wallpaper image file, it sometimes returns the wrong image file, or a URL to the folder containing the image file… I just couldn’t get it to work reliably – especially when a dynamic wallpaper, or a shuffling wallpaper is set, it just straight out poops its pants.
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Looks pretty much like Camouflage.app. I stopped detecting / reading the wallpaper URL long ago because it was hell to find out, hell to properly render and with sandbox pretty much impossible to access anyway. Doing a screenshot of the desktop window turned out to be more reliable, but nowadays it's also complicated and error prone.
And keeping the window on top of the desktop icons is also not as trivial as it seems.
I was hoping to see an animation that makes the wallpaper fold up like a rug to reveal the icons underneath. I’m disappointed.
Another option is to allow the Finder to be quit: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/160037
`defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool YES && killall Finder`
What is the motivation for literally covering the desktop with another window? Is the effect any different than that of deselecting “On desktop” in System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Desktop & Stage Manager > Show Items? Or the equivalent `defaults write com.apple.WindowManager StandardHideDesktopIcons -bool YES`?
@Marcos
I know, I wanted that too but the animation I had for it seemed a bit off. I'll keep working on it, though : )
This is a small Bash-Script that I use to hide/show all icons and folders on the Finder Desktop.
I use it in my .bash_profile as a Terminal command. To make a AppleSkript or Shortcut should also be easy by using all inside the { } and add #!/bin/bash
### hide show all icons and folders on Finder Desktop
desktophide () {
if [[ $(defaults read com.apple.finder CreateDesktop) -eq "0" ]];
then
export SHOWDESKTOP=1;
echo "Unhiding Desktop icons"
else
export SHOWDESKTOP=0;
echo "Hiding Desktop icons"
fi
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop $SHOWDESKTOP
killall Finder
}
