Hide Unsightly Desktop Icons Easily with Automator

This is a quick and easy tip for hiding specific hard drive icons from your desktop without having to write any code.

As you can see in the screenshot, I have a few icons for my Windows 8 drive that I don't want to see.

A super easy way to do this is to create an Automator app that you can run on the fly or at startup to eject select hard drives making it seem as if they are hidden.

Here's how:


1. Launch Automator, you can go to Spotlight and type Automator.
2. Next, you'll want to create an Application.

3. In the 'Drag Actions or files here to build your workflow, select the drives you want to hide and drag them into the window.


4. Next, select 'Files & Folders', and double click 'Eject Disk'.

5. Go to File > Save and save the Application to your Applications folder. You can name it whatever you like in the 'Save As:' field.
6. Test out your Automator application by double-clicking it. As you can see in the screenshot below, the desktop icons that I selected appear hidden but are in fact ejected.


7. You can schedule this to run at startup by going to your user account and adding the Application that you created to the Login Items. Additionally, you can mount the ejected disks by going to Disk Utility at any time.

isnt it easier to create an fstab rule to not even mount the drive, much easier then this automator crap, even saves u unnececary boot time by mounting and fscking a drive...

like described here which still works for me in 10.10.

Yoyellow said:

isnt it easier to create an fstab rule to not even mount the drive, much easier then this automator crap, even saves u unnececary boot time by mounting and fscking a drive...

like described here which still works for me in 10.10.

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Depends. Some people are not comfortable using terminal.

beelzebozo said:

Depends. Some people are not comfortable using terminal.

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having a hackintosh and being afraid of some simple commands in terminal... imo you shouldnt start with hackingtosh' if thats the case..

but anyway you take time to make this post and explain in good detail how and what, and thats nice. I shouldnt burn you over the fact that there are other ways to unmount drives.. many paths lead to rome, as always.

yoyellow said:

having a hackintosh and being afraid of some simple commands in terminal... Imo you shouldnt start with hackingtosh' if thats the case..

Click to expand...

^^^^this!

Yoyellow said:

having a hackintosh and being afraid of some simple commands in terminal... imo you shouldnt start with hackingtosh' if thats the case..

Click to expand...

i dont think he is afraid of some simple commands in terminal like you said,if you like to use the terminal go ahead but is good idea to use the Automator too.

Hey Guys, what about a loginHook?



https://wiki.afp548.com/index.php/Login/Logout_Hooks_in_OS_X

Like the other one said : Many ways lead to Rome...

Thanks for the tip. I recently installed an SSD in my iMac and moved all the data to it from the hard drive. The HDD sits empty on my desktop until I remember to eject it. This takes care of that.

Beelzebozo nice work thanks for the tip

Login hooks were deprecated in OS 10.4 in favor of "launchd". They still work now but probably won't in OS X 10.11. From developer.apple.com (https://developer.apple.com/library...ual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CustomLogin.html):

"Login and Logout Scripts

Important: There are numerous reasons to avoid using login and logout scripts:

• Login and logout scripts are a deprecated technology. In most cases, you should use launchd jobs instead, as described in Creating Launch Daemons and Agents.

• Login and logout scripts are run as root, which presents a security risk.

• Only one of each script can be installed at a time. They are intended for system administrators; application developers should not use them in released software."