Desktop shows only background image – how to return to default behavior

desktophigh sierra

I have an iMac running macOS High Sierra. Recently I setup my system so that my Desktop does not show the connected drives and doesn't show anything on my Desktop.

My desktop is completely clean. I also had many files and folders on my desktop. All those are hidden as well. I can't remember how I did that and now I'd like to change settings or turn it off but can't. Does anyone know how you would do what I have done and can tell me?

I have all the boxes checked in the Finder preferences panel so thats not the issue.

I remember a pull down menu with several options for displaying the desktop. I just don't recall how I got to the pull down menu.

Best Answer

The description of the problem in question is possibly a bit ambiguous. But the most common causes for these symptoms are:

  • The individual Finder preferences are one option, described in wch1spink's answer. But with these options deselected regular files should still appear on the Desktop.

  • Another option would be using the defaults-system (as often this variable is set to a certain state by many 3rd party GUI tools of the type "CustimzeHiddenFeatures" as well, as described by user3439894' answer). With the following variable set to false only the Desktop background picture is shown, regardless whether any files exist at the path ~/Desktop/:

    To check whether this was done, enter in Terminal:

     defaults read com.apple.finder CreateDesktop
    

    If that shows as result: "The domain/default pair of (com.apple.finder, CreateDesktop) does not exist", the following will not do much.
    If the result is shown as: "false", then proceed, as we've found the problem:

    To hide desktop icons, copy and paste each of these into Terminal

     defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop false 
     killall Finder
    

    To show desktop icons again, (i.e. the default state, even the variable is unset)

     defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop true  
     killall Finder
    

    alternatively, completely unset the variable and let the defaults take over again:

     defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop
     killall Finder
    

    So in this case one of the last two commands would be the one needed to reverse the situation of unwanted barrenness of the Finder's desktop.