Help— lock desktop icons in place?

[carsonkahn]

i know in OS9 you used to be able to disable moving or renaming desktop icons and folders, etc. in leopard and above, is there a way to do this?

 

[BlueRevolution]

I guess you could open a Terminal window and run

chmod a-w ~/Desktop

but that could screw quite a few things up. You wouldn't be able to change files saved to the desktop or save new files, command+shift+3 and command+shift+4 would stop working, and it wouldn't prevent you from moving icons around. To reverse it, run

chmod u+w ~/Desktop

The short answer is, no. No you can't.

 

[carsonkahn]

yeah that doesn't really work for me. anyone else have any suggestion before i close this post?

 

[emptyCup]

disable moving or renaming desktop icons and folders... is there a way to do this?

To prevent renaming, lock the file or folder. Why do you want to prevent moving? Is this for you or others?

 

[Gregg2]

i know in OS9 you used to be able to disable moving or renaming desktop icons and folders,

Really? I never knew that. Just out of curiosity, do you remember how it was done?

To prevent renaming, lock the file or folder.

Won't locking the Desktop folder prevent you from adding things to it? Hmmm. What would happen when you "plug in" a flash drive?

 

[mstrze]

I don't think the poster was suggesting to lock the Desktop folder, but the individual important files and folders that one didn't want to be 'adjusted' that reside on the desktop.


I don't recall an OS9 desktop 'locking'...but I do recall a 'snap-to-grid' type functionality. Didn't prevent moving that I recall, but kept things in secure rows and columns for sure.

 

[Gregg2]

You're probably correct, but as the Desktop is the focus of the OP's question, I thought it might be interpreted as applying to the Desktop Folder.

Your recollection of OS9 is the same as mine. I used it until Dec. '07!

 

[Mumford]

I guess you could open a Terminal window and run

chmod a-w ~/Desktop

but that could screw quite a few things up. You wouldn't be able to change files saved to the desktop or save new files, command+shift+3 and command+shift+4 would stop working, and it wouldn't prevent you from moving icons around. To reverse it, run

chmod u+w ~/Desktop

The short answer is, no. No you can't.

This doesn't work. Apparently Finder keeps icon positions in memory while it's running, and saves them to .DS_Store when it quits.

You could set everything exactly the way you want it, then lock the .DS_Store file. That would make the icons go back to where you placed them the next time Finder is launched. But it won't prevent you from moving the icons around while Finder is running.

 

[BulletToothTony]

i know it's a bit old but i'm also interested in this..

i recently changed the look of my desktop and i like how the HD and Time Machine Drive look at the bottom, but they keep moving back to the upper right corner.. any way to lock them in place?

 

[Gregg2]

See the second post.

I'd say you have to live with it. Apple set it up to put those icons in the upper right. They don't give users a simple tool for changing that.