Folders – How to View Any Folder as Desktop

desktopfolders

There's a folder called "Desktop" in the home directory. By default, when there are no windows on the screen, the contents of "Desktop" are shown over the background. I'm wondering if there's a way to make another folder show up over the background instead, so that I could (for example) have the contents of "Documents" or something like that appear behind my windows.

Right now I can do it by moving the contents of another folder into the "Desktop" folder and moving them back when I'm done, but I feel like there much be an easier way to do this, especially since copying takes a long time with some larger files.

Thanks

Best Answer

From this SO answer:

Backup your old default Desktop folder

If you have files in your existing Desktop folder, don’t worry. We’re going to back up your existing folder so you can copy your old Desktop files to your new DropBox Desktop folder afterwards.

Simply open a terminal and enter the following command.

sudo mv desktop desktop.bak

Create a symbolic link to your new DropBox Desktop folder

The long and short is that we’re telling OSX to create a link to the Desktop folder in your DropBox, but to treat the link as if it were the default Desktop folder itself. In this way, when you save things to your Mac Desktop, they’ll appear on your Desktop as before, but actually be stored in your new DropBox folder. Here’s how to do it…

ln -s /Users/your-user-name/Dropbox/Desktop/ ./Desktop

This worked perfectly for me.

Credit goes to https://ifyouwillit.com/life/auto-sync-your-mac-desktop-folder-with-dropbox/

Please upvote both question and answer on linked Q&A

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