DONE: small prog to hide desktop icons

[xtekian]

my desktop is fairly cluttered but i like easy access to my icons; i don't like other programs that try putting icons in a menu or whatnot

is there or can someone make a program that will hide all the icons on the desktop with a keypress? preserving the location of the icons would also be important. finally, it would be really nice if icon locations could be preserved by resolution; for example, if i am usually in 1280x1024 but i switch to 800x600 but then i switch back to the original resolution it would be nice if the icons could automatically revert to its original locations

thanks =)

xtekian

[hwtan]

Here's a tiny program to temporarily toggle on/off the display of the desktop icons.
Extract it and create a shortcut to it. You can then assign a shortcut key to the program to do what you want.

Doesn't preserve position across resolution change though.

[xtekian]

cool, thanks =) this works well with autohotkey

[skrommel]

Here's a script to only show the desktop icons when the mouse is on the desktop.

HideDesktop - Only show the desktop icons when the mouse is on the desktop.

You'll find the downloads and more info at Skrommel Software.

Skrommel

[brotherS]

What a simple and great idea!

Thanks, skrommel!

[skywalka]

This is supposed to do a similar thing.

http://www.virtualplastic.net/msgboard/thread.php?forum=0&thread=737

When I tried it, it became unresponsive after a while but it seems to work for others.

[mimiihu]

hi.
i know this is old and i tried several programs to hide icons.
the best that suits my needs is the one posted by skywalka, autohide, because it mimics the windows "show/hide desktop icons" while others make them reappear by refreshing the desktop. http://www.geocities.com/autohide_hompage/Autohide.htm

also, it doesn't just toggle desktop icons. if they're already hidden by xp, it does nothing, if they're visible, it hides them.

now the thing is, the author stopped updating the software and like skywalka says it's buggy and the config option is not fully working as the author warns.

i didn't want to start a new thread for this but is it possible for skrommel to code a similar app which hides desktop icons like described above and adds an icon to the systray which makes possible to toggle visibility with a left click?

in addition to hiding the icons, to add the function to apply a predefined wallpaper on program run too and when the program exits, restore the default wallpaper and the default icon visibility (hidden or visible, like they were set by pervious user). the path to the wallpaper would be relative.

this would be useful to provide a clean environment to use my portable software in a friend's computer or internet cafes where usually the desktop is cluttered.

thanks for your time and cheers.

[Danniboi]

Thanks for the cool downloads, this will come in handy!!

[daddydave]

Don't know why, but in compiled version on my system, if I right click on the system tray icon and click settings, it looks like it tries to create HideDesktop.ini in C:\Windows\System32. (See screenshot attached.) The ahk version doesn't do this and brings up the .ini file correctly in Notepad, and in the same folder as the .exe. I have the .exe in a subfolder of C:\Tools and I am running Windows 7 64 bit.

Anyway it is very useful to hide desktop icons to make it easy to show off the Windows background (are we still allowed to call it wallpaper?)