Unclutter App Sweeps Away Desktop Detritus

By

1360672778.jpg

Unclutter is the app which will finally – finally! – tidy up the embarrassing mess that is your Mac’s desktop. It does exactly what its name suggests, sweeping your unfiled files under its virtual rug, and giving quick access to a notepad and your clipboard.

Install the app (it’s a mere $3 from the Mac App Store) and you get a little icon up in the menubar. Drag a file from your desktop to the top of the screen and up pops the panel, giving you a place to drop it. And that’s it. Your temporary or oft-used files are right there, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice.

To open the panel for retrieval, put the cursor at the top of the screen and scroll down (a two-finger swipe on your trackpad) to make the panel appear. You can make a quick note, or access your clipboard.

The files are actually moved to a folder in Unclutter’s own Application Support folder (in your library). You can navigate there in the Finder, or right-click a file in the panel to reveal it. By default, this folder isn’t indexed by Spotlight, but you could add it to the index if you wanted to.

I installed Unclutter as soon as I heard about it. I keep a clean desktop, but sometimes I just have to have a few files or folders on there. Now I can keep them out of the way, and use the desktop as a true, super-temporary site for organizing files.

The notes are pretty neat too, although this would be a perfect place to mimic the functionality of the excellent Drafts app for iOS. Just sayin’.

Source: Unclutter App

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.