If you have a complicated desk setup with a bunch of peripherals, accessories, docks and external storage, you likely need to consider your cable management. It can make the difference between a tidy workstation and a rat’s nest of cables and cords.
A few cheap accessories can really clean up your setup. You can hide a messy power strip in a cable management box, route cables underneath your desk using a tray or bundle a bunch of them together in a sleeve. You can get covers for protecting cords that run on the floor across a walkway, or for cables that run down the side of a wall.
Keep reading for our product guide for information and recommendations. And to see how others are putting these ideas into practice, check out our tagged setups posts below.
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A cable management box is typically used to house a surge protector, power strip or UPS (uninterruptible power supply). This serves two important functions. Not only does it hide the unsightly mess of a power strip, it also protects the plugs from being bumped, knocked or messed with.
I would never want the messiness of a power strip on my desk, but I don’t mind having a plain white cable management box off to the side. And now, I don’t have to get down on the floor to add or remove things.
Slots in the side allow you to neatly route cords in and out. The easily removable lid is easy to open up and fiddle with.
You can get a cable management box in all kinds of styles to match the aesthetic of your setup. Mine is plain white and blends in with the wall, so I hardly notice it. You can get one in a natural wood finish, in a hand-made rattan basket style, or a two-tone style.
You can use the trays to as power strip holders, cord organizers, wire tamers for office and home. In black, 2-pack (DESK-AC06-2C).
A similar but different solution to a box is a cable management tray. This is typically an open tray that slides or screws under the lip of a desk. This has the benefit of not taking up any space on your floor nor your desk surface, if you’re short on space.
Most cable management trays are more open than boxes, making it easier to plug new things in or unplug things you don’t need. While it may add visual clutter, stowing them below the surface of your desk can hide some of the mess from most angles.
Amazon sells this modern metal tray that clamps under your desk, in addition to the simple black tray you can screw in, shown above.
A sleeve can help with cable management by grouping multiple cords together in one. If you need to route three or more cords between two places, a sleeve will significantly tidy up the mess. A cable management sleeve can also protect them from being chewed on by a pet or a baby.
Cable sleeves can be easily trimmed with scissors to create the length you need. Thicker sleeves can hold more cables together.
While the sleeves may look like a single cylindrical piece, they’re actually split down the middle — so adding or removing a cable from the bundle is easy, and you don’t need to worry about the thickness of the connector on the end.
Check out Amazon’s Choice cable management sleeve here.
If you need to route some cables across a walkway, you’ll absolutely want to have some floor cord covers to protect them. Shoes (or even feet) will wear out the cables and can cause damage over time. And cables can be a tripping hazard, as well.
Floor cord covers typically come in two different styles: A thick rubber material with a split underneath for you to put cables through, or a velcro-style mat that you can stick to a carpet, and easily cut to length.
IKEA has plenty of cable management products for home, office and living rooms. It is a Swedish company that produces easy-to-assemble furniture and home goods.
IKEA makes the Försäsong, a basic cable management tray for holding a power strip below the surface of your desk. An alternative is the Signum, a metal tray that simply hold and routes cables out of sight.
IKEA also offers a variety of cable management boxes. The Sätting is a basic white plastic box with a removable lid. The Hönsnät is a similar product, made out of a natural molded paperboard fiber for a unique look. The Mittzon is a larger cable management box made out of metal, with a hinged lid — ideal for holding multiple power supplies in one.
For cable routing, IKEA has a couple solutions. The Montera discreetly routes cables against a wall. The Kalkstuff can be attached to the side of a desk — or wherever you can attach tape — to hold your cables in place.
This motorized sit/stand desk comes with a built-in monitor stand, cable management tray and charging ports.
You can buy a desk with many cable management features built right in. Granted, it’s much cheaper to add the accessories to a desk you already have — but if you need a new desk, this could be an excellent all-in-one solution.
The desk above comes with a built-in cable tray in the rear for keeping everything organized. It also comes with a VESA monitor arm, on a rail that you can use to attach other accessories — another display, a microphone arm, a headphone stand and much more. It’s a motorized sit/stand desk, with presets you can adjust. Check it out on Amazon.
Hide cables running against a wall with this elegant cover. This kit comes with multiple straight lines, elbows and T-connectors you can cut to length.
To elegantly conceal a cable that runs down to the ground, there are some cable management wall products you can try. The most basic is a plastic cover you can put all your cables in. They come in a variety of colors to blend in with your wall, along with splits, corners and intersections if you need to make a more complex route. These stick to the outside of the wall.
If you consider yourself to be handy and want an even cleaner solution, you can try building in some cable management inside your wall. With two holes in your wall (directly above one another) you can install grommets that you can elegantly feed your cords into and out of. This is ideal for wall-mounted TVs, but could also be used at a desk.
The best desk cable management seems like magic because it makes things disappear. Today’s M4 Mac mini setup with dual 4K displays shows that off beautifully, hiding most of the workstation’s gear underneath an elegant desk.
“That cable management is art,” said one appreciative commenter.
In this case, the user made the cable-management parts using a 3D printer. But you can achieve the same effect using a few inexpensive products that aren’t difficult to install.
A proper cable management solution can transform a messy desk into a stunning setup. Function101’s innovative Cable Blocks are weighted, magnetic cord holders that can bring order to cable chaos.
Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney called them his “favorite cord management system” in his Cable Blocks review. And now, Cult of Mac Deals offers a great discount on them. You can pick up a Cable Blocks six-pack on sale for just $29.99 (regularly $39). Each one can hold a single cable in place — and they even stick to each other if you want to keep all your chargers neatly aligned.
This holiday season, give yourself or someone else the timeless gift of better cable management. Today’s MacBook Pro and LG DualUp display user shows us one way to make a small but significant improvement in the look of a computer setup. You can use cables with 90-degree connectors rather than straight ones for a cleaner look (or get USB-C cable adapters with right-angle or vertical ends for your straight cables). Check out the “after” photo above and the “before” photo below.
And seriously, if you’re hard up for stocking-stuffer ideas, a USB-C adapter kit might be just the thing. See below.
It’s another thrilling Monday, so we thought we’d sex things up with everybody’s favorite scintillating subject — cable management. Sarcasm aside, it’s high on the list of things folks only love having done, not planning (and dreading) or actually doing (in half-assed ways). Anyone who’s ever been forced to clean their room can relate. So today’s easily digestible tidbit comes from a MacBook Pro user offering one simple and effective MacBook Pro cable management tip.
Almost every day, our robot vacuum tangles itself in charging cables, which the kids toss cavalierly across the floor. Snaking from behind the couch, the cords wait like baited fishing lines to ensnare our unsuspecting Roomba. It’s an unmitigated cable management disaster.
Luckily, we just got some Cable Blocks from Function101. Cable Blocks are rubbery little magnetic blocks that sit on your desk or nightstand and hold cables out of the way. It’s a simple and clever design.
Here’s why Cable Blocks are my favorite cable management system.
We love it when unfamiliar gear in a computer setup cropping up on social media makes us go, “what the hell is that thing?”
It happened with today’s featured setup, which is bit unusual because it centers on an iPad Pro rather than a desktop computer or laptop. But the unfamiliar item turned out to be a desk mat with a cool trick using metal pieces to tame cable clutter.
In this week’s giveaway, two lucky winners will bag themselves a magnetic Desk Mat Pro with two Cable Block XL cable managers from Function101. This is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to tidy up their desk and ensure wires are secure and easily accessible.
This superb Function101 Desk Mat Pro bundle comes in four colors: black, gray, navy and purple. This desktop-organization bundle retails for $60, and you could win one with your free entry below. However, you also can grab this bundle for the sale price of $48 in the Cult of Mac Store right now.
Do you ever feel like you could be neater and less disorganized? Some of us always feel like that. But plenty of tools exist to help you get organized, like the Function101 accessories listed for 20% this week in the Cult of Mac Store.
You can find 10 helpful items in the Function101 collection, from desktop organizers to cable-management must-haves. See some highlights of the sale below. The sale runs through July 5.
Cable Matters unveiled a foldable 4K USB-C hub Tuesday for hybrid workers to use on the road or in a home office.
“The Cable Matters Foldable USB-C Multiport Adapter with HDMI & USB Power Delivery (PD) converts a single USB-C port into a multimedia powerhouse, all in a small and ultra-portable form factor,” the company said.
We know what you’re thinking: a “Pro” desk mat? Well, yes, actually. The Function101 Desk Mat Pro is rather capable. Not only does it help protect your desk, it’s a serious tool for often-neglected cable management in and around the computer setup.
And the professional-level desk mat is now available in the Cult of Mac Store for $39.95. Other desk mats just aren’t qualified.
“Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet,” goes an old Valentine’s Day saying. And what’s sweeter than saving a few bucks? (Not that your sweetheart has to know about that part when you give them a gift).
The Cult of Mac Store’s Valentine’s Day Sweet Savings sale goes through 11:59 p.m. PST on February 14. You can get 20% off an array of Apple accessories, including organizers, cable blocks and more from Function 101 and stylish stretch-link stainless steel Apple Watch bands and stacking bracelets from Rilee & Lo.
And you can score even bigger savings on iPhone cases and more from other brands.
Getting great new gear for your computer setup has more than just the obvious benefit of awesomeness. Sometimes it’s the perfect reason to improve your setup in ways most people put off, like the dreaded cleaning up of cable clutter.
That’s what happened with today’s featured dual-display-and-M1 Max MacBook Pro setup. The user finally got his new Studio Display, and good things followed in the terms of taming the cable monster.
Sometimes you see a pristine computer setup flaunted on social media and you think, how is that even real? Is it staged? Is it a render? At the very least, it looks like they left out all the cables for the photograph. But that’s not necessarily the case.
A lot of us live with messy setups, in part due to cable clutter. But neatening things up doesn’t have to be next-to impossible, as today’s featured Mac mini setup demonstrates.
Pretty much anyone with gear powered by electricity — like a computer setup — can tell you how pervasive a problem cable clutter can be. Dealing with cable management is nobody’s favorite task, though, so it often goes unaddressed. And yet certain products, like cable blocks, go a long way toward solving the thorny problem.
Function 101 Cable Blocks are perfect for keeping your cables neatly arranged and within reach, rather than splayed all over the place. And you can get them for 30% off today in the Cult of Mac Store. It’s the last day of the sale.
Leave it to a digital product designer to work their magic in a tastefully pristine workstation with an absolute minimum of cable clutter. “Cable management gets a 10 out of 10,” one person said of today’s featured computer setup. And all that walnut wood doesn’t hurt, either.
But how did they manage to tame the cable monster?
OK, so no 2021 award for Most Fastidious Cable Management, mentioned in this article’s headline, exists — at least not around here. But if it did, we might hand it to the person behind today’s setup.
It centers on a 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro and a 32-inch LG 4K display. And it keeps cable clutter to an extreme minimum.
Once you get an Apple Watch, you may be tempted to buy a charging dock for it. But folks on Reddit.com are happy to show off how they saved some money by constructing charging docks out of their beloved Lego building bricks.
All you need is the USB charging cable and puck that came with your Apple Watch and the imagination to make something that hides it while charging the wearable.
Kanto has rolled out a pair of high-quality speaker stands it said can help clarify your sound system’s audio, isolate vibration and even organize some of your cable clutter. You can get the Kanto SX Series Floor Speaker Stands in two sizes: 22 inches high and 26 inches high.
In the world of computer setups, space is often at a premium. When you’ve got computers, displays, peripherals, gadgets and cables, you need some surface area. But not everyone has a big desk, much less more than one. That’s where certain types of stands and mounting arms come in handy.
You’ve got to love somebody bragging about getting their computer setup’s cable management down to one cord, because it’s never really one cord. They don’t mean it literally. It’s just that one cord to a hub or dock helped reduce their previously tangled mess of cables splaying out all over the place.
You may not be into overstuffed leather sofas, leather car seats and jackets worthy of the wardrobe department of The Sopranos. But it’s hard to deny the sense of class and luxury leather accessories can add to a computer workstation. And you can really dress up your desk with Harber London’s leather desk mat and mouse pad combo.
Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Edward Wang, Ph.D., is an executive director with Quest Diagnostics. He took some serious time and effort making his setup a clean and powerful tool for health care work and audiovisual play. Once he diagnosed and treated a cable-management malady stemming from several separate pieces of computer and audio equipment, his setup delighted him.
You can spend hours on cable management when trying to create the perfect home cinema setup, but you don’t need to. Why hide the wires away when you can make them look as good as they do in the sweet setup above?
All you need is a tube of superglue, steady hands, and patience.
Your desk needs to be clean and organized so you function as efficiently as possible, right? Don’t you get tired of wasting time untangling, tripping and spilling due to that pesky abundance of cords.
CableHub isn’t just any other cable management system. Those only store one or two cables at once, but you need something that exceeds that. Some people need to charge a tablet, phone, headset, laptop, and any other everyday necessity to keep your day running smooth, and CableHub will help make that happen. And Cult of Mac Deals has The CableHub 2 Pack for only $24.99 during this limited time offer.
