How To: Organize Your Desktop, Dock, and Bookmarks

Posted by Alec Feld on 03/30/07 in Articles, Organization, Productivity

OK, I’ll admit it, I use my desktop as a file storage area from time to time. Disorganization of your desktop, dock, bookmarks, and more can cause clutter and confusion. With a disorganized Mac, valuable time is wasted on finding files, apps, and more. Today I’m going to show you how to organize several parts of your Mac to make life on the desktop a bit easier.

1. The Desktop
Desktop The biggest source of clutter is the desktop. When you dump files on your desktop, it’s hard to find those files quickly, and it also slows down your Mac. A dirty desktop can be a big source of speed reduction. If you use the desktop as a temporary storage area, create a folder on the desktop and use that folder instead. That way, you will only have one item on the desktop instead of many items. If your downloads are the problem, go into your browser’s preferences and set the download folder to a “Downloads” folder on your desktop, as this will cause a big portion of your incoming files to be automatically relocated and organized. For a quick fix to a messy desktop, download DeskShade from MacRabbit and select “Cover Desktop”. This will temporary hide all icons on your desktop, and can give you some disorganization relief without resorting to cleaning up your desktop.

2. The Dock
Dock The dock is the center of all things on the Mac, as it’s where your favourite apps, documents, and more are located. However, many Mac users throw ten, twenty, or thirty apps in their dock, creating a large line of icons at the bottom of the display. Keep your Dock down to the apps you use every half hour. For me, that’s Finder (that’s a given), Mail, Safari, iChat, and iTunes. This should greatly reduce the number of apps in your dock to about six or seven icons, and will allow you to find the apps you launch most, quicker. If you have a few more icons, you can sort them into categories using dock dividers. Although it’s available as an option, don’t put documents in your dock, unless its a document you use daily or very frequently, such as a Word template.

3. Bookmarks
Safari Bookmarks are key to quick and easy browsing, and most users probably use them more than they use the address bar. The Bookmarks Bar can become messy in any browser. First, add bookmarks with the name “|” (pipe). These pipes will act as separators. Direct these bookmarks towards Google, or just a blank page. Add as many as needed. Within these separators, place bookmarks into categories. For instance, I have Apple, Work, and Tech. Yes, this could be done with folders, but I have found this method works a little better. For the Bookmarks menu, create folders, treat them as categories, and drag bookmarks into them accordingly.

Organization of these three elements can both speed up your Mac and speed up your workflow. The organization of the desktop will allow you to find files, downloads, and more, quicker, the organization of the dock will allow you to know where apps are in the dock, and will allow more room on the screen for other elements and the clean up of your bookmarks will allow you to browse and find your favourite sites even faster.

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22 Comment(s)

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Michael said on

March 30th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

nice tips

John Baker said on

March 30th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

You could always use Hazel to automatically clean up your desktop based on rules you set… (look for a review here soon)

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22694

Josh Pyles said on

March 30th, 2007 at 10:20 pm

You could also use Desktopple Pro from FoggyNoggin software. I use this all the time, and it has all kinds of great features. Check it out at http://www.foggynoggin.com

-1

Wayne B said on

March 30th, 2007 at 11:01 pm

Oh, you have to get a third party enhancement to fix the broken OSX dock? Brilliant.

Andre said on

March 31st, 2007 at 12:21 am

My dock is nice, organized and small. It’s my desktop, bookmarks and files in general that are anything but organized… Unfortunatly I suspect that it would take weeks to clean up my clutter, and even then it would be the way it was in a matter of days.

I’ve made an effort with my desktop by creating two folders — To DO and Misc. Unfortunatly, I don’t use them as much as I should, and the things in them have long since been forgotten.

Ioannus de Verani said on

March 31st, 2007 at 12:56 am

Hum. Makes me wish I had a mac to organize…

siong1987 said on

March 31st, 2007 at 2:12 am

I rarely use my dock. I usually use QuickSilver to access to my favourite softwares.

Chris Coyier said on

March 31st, 2007 at 3:31 am

I find a great way to keep your desktop organized is to use a built-in finder feature. Command-J from the finder or View > Show View Options then “Keep arranged by: Kind”.

This keeps all your crap on the desktop organized and arranged instead of having all kinds of icons strewn about.

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Mac vs PC said on

March 31st, 2007 at 3:37 am

I especially like the tip about not having too many files on the desktop, I have seen a few too many Macs where people actually ran out of room for files, so they just kept shrinking them down in size until you could barely even make them out!

http://www.switchingtomac.com

Gassia said on

March 31st, 2007 at 5:47 am

Overflow is a great program for having all your favorite files, programs and folders right at hand and quickly accessible. I have been using it for quite a while now and just can’t live without it.

http://www.stuntsoftware.com/Overflow/

martoon said on

March 31st, 2007 at 6:00 am

Good tips. Some I’m already using, others I did not know. One trick I’ve recently learnedis that you can store icons in the toolbar of each open window. I use it to store key apps so I can easily drag a file onto it when needed. It works for me since I’ve always had the tendency to clutter up my dock with the newest, coolest most useless software which results in endless scrolling up and down before I can find what I’m looking for.

http://www.martoon.org/images/IconsInWindowToolbar.jpg

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Trevor said on

March 31st, 2007 at 6:12 am

Interesting, probably could work with some of these, thanks.

sa said on

March 31st, 2007 at 6:43 am

But thats exactly what the dock desktop is for! Storing files that your working on, it makes no sense to make a folder to keep your desktop stuff in that means one more click.
I use the desktop for whatever project I’m working on, then at the end of the project organize that work into a folder and store it somewhere like the documents folder.

Mike N said on

March 31st, 2007 at 7:25 am

The more you put in your Dock the smaller you can make it (a good thing for me) At the moment there are 52 including 3 open Skpe chats. However I organise my Dock so that similar apps are in the same place eg. I have Mail, Safari, Skype, iChat, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger next to each other so that when I want one the cursor is already heading in the right direction. Oh, and I like the Dock on the right hand side of the right hand screen - it gets in the way of scrolling pages at the bottom. I have twin 22″ monitors with plain black screens and I try never to switch off with an icon on either of them. To make filing these icons faster, I split Finder into two with a second version labelled PICS into which I can drop downloaded picture files without going through several menus.

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Ryan said on

March 31st, 2007 at 7:47 am

I have dragged my applications folder into the dock, simply right mouse clicking on it gives me functionality similar to windows start button.

Richard said on

March 31st, 2007 at 10:17 am

I use the desktop for temporary files so that i am reminded to do something about them. After I have finished I put them somewhere more appropriate

butter said on

March 31st, 2007 at 10:19 am

I tend to use a lot of folders with intuitive names (like Documents/Personal/Family, Documents/Professional/Resumes, Pictures/[Location], etc.). On the desktop, I keep a Downloads folder and one called All Purpose, which I use for any temporary need and then when I’m done, delete what’s in it or save it to the appropriate place. I keep my top 7-8 applications in the Dock, including System Preferences. Have also found this free download, which lists apps and utilities kinda like the PC Start menu, incredibly useful:

http://softbend.free.fr/himmelbar/

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swampy said on

March 31st, 2007 at 11:21 am

I’m a fan of folders in the dock. I have the Applications folder in the dock, but I also created my own Applications folder with subfolders of tasks (Graphics, Telecom, Media, Games, Utilities, Office etc.) This folder is stored in my User folder. I put aliases of my most used Applications in their proper subfolder. All are easy to find and launch.

I also have a Customer Projects folder with Alphabetized sub folders. Jones Oil artwork goes in a “Jones Oil” folder inside the “J” folder. etc. Sure makes locating anything to do with a customer’s job easy to find. Copies of e-mail, pictures, articles, correspondence etc. dealing with Jones Oil.. I know right where to go or right where to file it.

Mike N said on

March 31st, 2007 at 12:59 pm

I also keep an addresses folder in the dock so that I can drag and drop onto emails or files when I need to

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alej744 said on

March 31st, 2007 at 4:20 pm

This is great advice

-1

Fer said on

March 31st, 2007 at 5:51 pm

instead of dragging the applications folder to the dock you can also (in the finder bar) click on GO, then APPLICATIONS. Same number of clicks and you save 1 space in the dock

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Motorcycle Guy said on

April 22nd, 2007 at 3:39 pm

This makes me wish I had a mac so I could try some of this stuff out.