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How to Organize Your Mac's Desktop With Stacks in macOS Mojave
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When turning Stacks off, will it put the items back into their original arrangement (ie if they weren't originally in a perfect grid aligned right)?
I've been playing about with this but it doesn't stack folders. An oversight?
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Organizing files in folders is a complete waste of time. This is why Yahoo!'s organization of webpages failed while Google's search succeeded. People are not organizers by default and those that are into it are the outliers.
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Agreed but dumping stuff there permanently is fine. After all, that's what the desktop metaphor is all about and the very reason for actually having objects there is their ready availability at all times.
Why would stacks organize folders? That would be pointless. A stack is just an automated folder, really. They should not mess with user created folders. Also, what are you talking about with humans are not organizers? Thats a vague and nonsense statement. HUmans value convenience. Organization can and cant be convenient. It depends on how its implemented. However, user oriented, thoughtful organization is almost always the correct avenue.
HYPERCARD IS ALIVE!!!!
STACKS??????? we have seen this before... with HYPERCARD! Waaaaaay ahead of its time..1987
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard
STACKS??????? we have seen this before... with HYPERCARD! Waaaaaay ahead of its time..1987
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard
It’s a nice feature for those of us that are unorganized but I keep things old school with Macintosh HD in the top right corner and that’s it. I used to keep tons of shortcuts and folders on windows desktops but I prefer keeping the Mac desktop clean. Spotlight is more than good enough if I need to access something fast.
Been using this feature all summer and as much as I wanted to love this feature, as much as I've tried to do things like this myself with scripting...I really, really hate it.
I hate the way the Stacks look when expanded. It looks confusing and ridiculous. Everything moves, even if its revealing a mere 1 or 2 files. Visually it is just bad. I have no idea how they approved this.
I hate the way the Stacks look when expanded. It looks confusing and ridiculous. Everything moves, even if its revealing a mere 1 or 2 files. Visually it is just bad. I have no idea how they approved this.
I agree. Messy desktops stress me out. This is another example of how NeXTSTEP’s superior UI was dumbed down when it became MacOS X. Nothing could be placed on the NeXT desktop. You could place documents and folders on a “shelf” in the Workspace Manager window, but the desktop was always clean.
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Because they just don’t care anymore. The Mac is an afterthought to Apple these days. They throw a few weird, half-baked, gimmicky features our way and pretend they’re innovative.
The stacks feature would be fine if it allowed you to select which desktop files you wanted to be a part of stacks. I prefer some files to be set alone. Seems like a problem waiting for a future solution I guess. I don't like the all or nothing approach.
[doublepost=1539223100][/doublepost]SO I have these nice stacks, but there all on the righthand side and whenever there are notifications they cover the icons/folders on the top. It doesn't appear you can move stacked folders to the other side of the desktop, or even all on the left side. This is annoying. Am I missing something, or this the price we pay for having things cleaned up?
If you're someone that has a lot of files on your desktop, you're going to love the new Stacks feature in macOS Mojave, which is designed to organize all of your files into neat little piles on your desktop, getting rid of clutter.
Unfortunately, Stacks is an option that's limited to the desktop and not available within individual file folders.
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Enabling and Disabling Stacks
Toggling Stacks on and off is done with just a couple of clicks on the desktop. When at the desktop, right click to bring up the desktop options menu, and then choose the "Stacks" option.
You can also use the Finder to enable Stacks.
Turning on Stacks will automatically organize your files by file type. Some of the available Stacks include documents, images, PDF documents, spreadsheets, other, and screenshots.
- Open a Finder window.
- In the menu bar at the top of the Mac, go to View.
- Check the "Use Stacks" option.
If you want to turn Stacks off and go back to a full view of all the files on the desktop, right click again and uncheck the Stacks option. Alternatively, reverse the Finder steps.
Files on the desktop before enabling Stacks.
Viewing Files in a Stack
Files on the desktop after enabling Stacks.
If you want to view all of the files that are contained within a Stack, just click, and it will expand the Stack and put a little arrow on the Stack's name so that you know which Stack you're viewing.
With the Stack expanded, if you click on a file, it will open up in whatever app is set to be the default app for that file type.
When done, click the Stack again to collapse it back down into an organized pile.
Click on a stack to expand it to see the files inside.
To open up all of your Stacks at once, option click on the any Stack, which will expand all of the desktop Stacks at once. Option click again on any of the open Stacks to close them all.
Tip: If for some reason you want to open up or close all of your Stacks with a slower expanding/collapsing animation, shift click instead of just clicking regularly.
Option click on any Stack to expand all Stacks.
Customizing Stacks
Stacks are organized by file type by default, but you can change the Stack organizational system, grouping your files by Date Last Opened, Date Added, Date Modified, Date Created, and Tags.
The most powerful sorting option in Stacks is of course Tags, which are user set and can be used to identify certain types of files, such as all documents relating to a specific topic.
- Open Finder.
- In the menu bar, click on the View option.
- Select the "Group Stacks By" option.
- Choose one of the available options to change the way your Stacks are sorted.
When grouped by one of the date options, Stacks will be listed in increments of Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, and then after that, by year.
Further Stacks Options
Stacks when sorted by creation date.
If you want to stick one of your Stacks into a folder, you can do so by right clicking on one of the Stacks and selecting the "New Folder With Selection" option.
Using the same right click options that are available when a Stack is selected, you can open the files, open them in a specified app, rename files, share files, compress files, send files to trash, and more. You basically have all of the same organizational options that you would have selecting any group of files on your desktop, but without the need to select them manually.
Article Link: How to Organize Your Mac's Desktop With Stacks in macOS Mojave
I agree. I hate not being able to line up my stacks on the left side of the desktop. I hate that when I insert a flash drive it gets squeezed in between my local drive icons & the stacks. So depending on the number of stacks it looks even more cluttered. Even worse when I expand my stacks. I'd like it so that I could choose where I want to place my stacks. On the left or horizontally above the dock, or vertically wherever. Apple give me some options! Don't hijack my stacks!
But in principle I like the idea & neatness of stacks.
Yes. As I'm using this again I'm noticing that when expanded it moves all other icons. Why?