Restore previous desktop layout

[BobHas]

Something caused my desktop layout to change - that is the layout of all the icons. Is there a way, presumably with Time Machine, to restore the prior layont?

I am guessing there is a file somewhere that stores the information.

 

[MacInWin]

Before trying to go back, you might try right click on an open spot on the desktop and see if one of the options got changed that can be changed to make it go back. The "Sort by" and "View options" items might be helpful.

 

[Rod]

As Jake has said there are multiple “sort by” options; by size, alphabetically, kind, date created/modified, last opened etc.

I usually keep mine sorted by size because if you have your Macintosh HD displayed on your Desktop or frequently have external drives connected they will always be in the top right corner of the display.

Do you keep a lot of files on your desktop? Can you describe what you have now, as opposed to how you had your display before or attach a screen shot of your desktop as it is now?

PS. I've never heard of anyone restoring folder display preferences from Time Machine although it may be possible.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Something caused my desktop layout to change - that is the layout of all the icons. Is there a way, presumably with Time Machine, to restore the prior layont?

I am guessing there is a file somewhere that stores the information.

It's way too easy to screw up the organization of your icons on your desktop by changing the view or resolution of your Mac. I don't know of a built-in way to automatically make it all be restored.

However, there is a free third party utility that you can install that will memorize the organization of your icons and restore them for you.

Desktop Icon Manager - DIM (free)

www.parker9.com- Desktop Icon Manager

Unfortunately DIM isn't able to restore your icon organization from prior to it's installation. It also can only restore your icon organization to the last time you did a save in DIM, so you might want to keep an alias of DIM on your desktop and get into the habit of clicking on it and doing a save whenever you think about it.

 

[Rod]

I agree with Randy, very easy to do accidentally but if you use one of or a combination of the display and sort preferences it's easy to return to the original display.
I remember accidentally rearranging the icons on my wife's desktop once. I used the "clean up by name" option to get them all into equal spacing not realising she had built up the arrangement over time using no preferences at all. Of course it was impossible to restore other than slow manual rearrangement. Nowadays she only has around 5 icons and they are folders. Myself I only have two permanent folders. One for stuff I need regularly and the other for temporary files and documents for filing like email attachments.

 

[BobHas]

As Jake has said there are multiple “sort by” options; by size, alphabetically, kind, date created/modified, last opened etc.

I usually keep mine sorted by size because if you have your Macintosh HD displayed on your Desktop or frequently have external drives connected they will always be in the top right corner of the display.

Do you keep a lot of files on your desktop? Can you describe what you have now, as opposed to how you had your display before or attach a screen shot of your desktop as it is now?

PS. I've never heard of anyone restoring folder display preferences from Time Machine although it may be possible.

Yes I keep a lot of icons on my desktop (which is three monitors wide BTW). All sorts - files, folders, aliases, and weblocs. Rather than drill down to find what I want I sort of work like a lean desktop, knowing the thing I am looking for is over there and just reaching for it.

 

[BobHas]

I agree with Randy, very easy to do accidentally but if you use one of or a combination of the display and sort preferences it's easy to return to the original display.
I remember accidentally rearranging the icons on my wife's desktop once. I used the "clean up by name" option to get them all into equal spacing not realising she had built up the arrangement over time using no preferences at all. Of course it was impossible to restore other than slow manual rearrangement. Nowadays she only has around 5 icons and they are folders. Myself I only have two permanent folders. One for stuff I need regularly and the other for temporary files and documents for filing like email attachments.

That may work if you manage the desktop under those schemes, but not in my case. This centers around a scheme of more or less random placement, All the icons about X are clustered over there.

 

[BobHas]

It's way too easy to screw up the organization of your icons on your desktop by changing the view or resolution of your Mac. I don't know of a built-in way to automatically make it all be restored.

However, there is a free third party utility that you can install that will memorize the organization of your icons and restore them for you.

Desktop Icon Manager - DIM (free)

www.parker9.com- Desktop Icon Manager

Unfortunately DIM isn't able to restore your icon organization from prior to it's installation. It also can only restore your icon organization to the last time you did a save in DIM, so you might want to keep an alias of DIM on your desktop and get into the habit of clicking on it and doing a save whenever you think about it.

Bingo. Thanks. I will check for it. It sounds like something I recall from many years ago - likely well before MacOS X.

I do not know what happened in this case, but the movements are similar to what I get if I change the resolution (lower, giving bigger icons and labels). The OS relocates things that don't fit and when you go back to the previous resolution they end up oddly placed, most;y based, I think, on where they were during the changed resolution..

In any case it would be interesting to know how MacOS manages this.

 

[BobHas]

It's way too easy to screw up the organization of your icons on your desktop by changing the view or resolution of your Mac. I don't know of a built-in way to automatically make it all be restored.

However, there is a free third party utility that you can install that will memorize the organization of your icons and restore them for you.

Desktop Icon Manager - DIM (free)

www.parker9.com- Desktop Icon Manager

Unfortunately DIM isn't able to restore your icon organization from prior to it's installation. It also can only restore your icon organization to the last time you did a save in DIM, so you might want to keep an alias of DIM on your desktop and get into the habit of clicking on it and doing a save whenever you think about it.

Well I tried DIM. Something is not right. I launch it, an icon appears in the Dock, but I don't see anything, and I get a beachball. Activity Monitor shows Finder is not responding. After I do Force Quit via the icon in the Dock I have to wait a considerable time before the beachball goes away and order is restored.

I am wondering about compatibility with my OS - High Sierra on a mid 2011 iMac. Maybe some issue with older OS versions has crept in? Or some conflict with something else on my system.

 

[MacInWin]

I do not know what happened in this case, but the movements are similar to what I get if I change the resolution (lower, giving bigger icons and labels). The OS relocates things that don't fit and when you go back to the previous resolution they end up oddly placed, most;y based, I think, on where they were during the changed resolution..

In any case it would be interesting to know how MacOS manages this.

So, the change in the Desktop was triggered by a change in screen resolution? That would have been handy to know from the start, if that is the case. What happens if you go back to the original resolution?

 

[BobHas]

So, the change in the Desktop was triggered by a change in screen resolution? That would have been handy to know from the start, if that is the case. What happens if you go back to the original resolution?

I did not knowingly change it (and did not see any sign of it changing), and I did not put it back. But there were odd things going on with the system that I was sorting aaround, including I think at least on boot where things could have happened that I did not see.

I don't know what caused it. The relocations seem to be sort you I get with resolution changes, but

1) I did not knowingly make any change, and

2) I usually see more issues than in this case. But I recall making some effort to reduce the issues a while back while looking for a way to improve Affinity Photo's icons, which are too small at my normal resolution so I was experimenting with a lowered resolution when I ran it. Maybe what I saw here was all the disruption that is left with where I ended up putting my icons.

 

[MacInWin]

Yeah, when you muck with resolutions, the system has to rearrange things on the desktop to fit the new resolution, even if that resolution is only temporarily there. Then when the resolution is restored, the system again calculates where things need to be, not where they were when the the screen was that resolution last time. And that shuffles things all over the place.

Yes I keep a lot of icons on my desktop (which is three monitors wide BTW). All sorts - files, folders, aliases, and weblocs. Rather than drill down to find what I want I sort of work like a lean desktop, knowing the thing I am looking for is over there and just reaching for it.

I know we all work differently, but this is a particularly inefficient way to go, I think. I would not use "lean" to describe a screen full of things all over the place. But some folks are very visual, like my wife, so her Desktop is cluttered as well. I have my Desktop somewhere between minimalist (Little to nothing on it) and hers (stuff covering 3/4 of the screen). I do have 10 external drives attached, so those icons are there, along with a dozen or so folder or aliases for folders that I use frequently. I periodically purge the desktop of stuff I dropped there for convenience, just as I do on my real desk. Not totally clean, but not cluttered.

The only time a cluttered Desktop actually impacts performance is at boot time when all of the links and icons need to be created and place on the Desktop. Other than that, Desktop is just another folder to the system. So, you do what you want/need. Good luck reorganizing it all. One thing you might do is take a screenshot of it once everything is in place so that the next time you have to redo it you have the pictures to follow.

 

[Rod]

If you have Sort By None ticked in the Sort by options doesn't that mean that any time you move or add a new icon that they all move around to accomodate the change? That would drive me crazy. Better to have a Sort by rule of some sort so that the order remains the same despite any change you might make I would have thought. How is your Finder view of the Desktop folder sorted? I use the same for both (by size) that way my Desktop folder mirrors my Desktop.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Well I tried DIM. Something is not right.

Make sure that you get the version that is specific for your version of the Mac OS. I have had DIM working just fine on an entire fleet of Macs ranging from 12 years old to one that I got just last month. Never had a problem with any version on any Mac.

 

[BobHas]

Make sure that you get the version that is specific for your version of the Mac OS. I have had DIM working just fine on an entire fleet of Macs ranging from 12 years old to one that I got just last month. Never had a problem with any version on any Mac.

I touched base with the author, and finally got to dig around. All seems well now. Somehow DIM and Finder were not getting along. I found and ran the old version (2.0.3 on his site) and it seemed to work (once I got past the issues with a really old app vs MacOS). Then I followed the suggestion to delete the files it creates and tried 4.0.3 again, and all was well!

Thanks all.

(BTW - how many icons on my desktop? DIM says 196, spread across three screens... )

 

[Cyrak6]

Before trying to go back, you might try right click on an open spot on the desktop and see if one of the options got changed that can be changed to make it go back. The "Sort by" and "View options" items might be helpful.

THANK YOU! I accidentally hit a shortcut that enabled Stacks, and couldn’t figure out what I’d done until I saw this post! I right clicked on the desktop, and there it was!