Keep Your Desktop Clean With, Erm, Clean [50 Mac Essentials #39]

Does your Mac’s desktop look like this? Or like this? If so, you need help. More to the point, you need Clean.

Clean’s a clever little utility that keeps your desktop clean for you. The best bit is that it doesn’t make you change your behavior – you can still keep dragging stuff on to your desktop and forgetting about it. That’s what you’ve been doing for years, right?

But Clean will keep an eye on the desktop and tidy up your mess when you’re not looking. It removes files when you tell it to, and sweeps them into another folder that’s out of sight. That stuff you thought you ought to keep is still there, if you really need it. But it’ll no longer make other people wince when they see your computer boot up.

Clean helps out by archiving the tidied-up files in a sensible way – storing them in monthly sub-folders, for example. It’s simple, it’s neat, and it’s, well, clean. Lovely. And free, on the Mac App Store.

(You’re reading the 39th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more, or grab the RSS feed.)

Giles Turnbull

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.