People still place a lot of icons on their desktop and that is actually a shame if you have just provided the desktop with a nice background. If you want to keep those icons and enjoy a tidy desktop at the same time, you can use AutoHideDesktopIcons, a tool that automatically hides all desktop icons after a few seconds.
AutoHideDesktopIcons 4.33
price
Free
Language
Dutch
OS
Windows
Website
www.tiny.cc/autohide
6 Score 60 
- Pros
- Extremely simple
- Timer
- Negatives
- You cannot hide the taskbar via the timer
- No option to activate the software via schedule
Windows has a feature to make all desktop icons disappear anyway. Right-click on the desktop and select the command from the contextual menu Display View / Desktop Icons. The check mark in front of this setting will disappear, along with the icons. You can do the same to get the icons back. Sounds easy, but it can be even smoother with a tool of only 93 Kb.
Timer
The portable tool comes as a zip that you have to unzip before you can open the exe file. If you want AutoHideDesktopIcons to always run in the background, turn on the option that the software works with Windows start late. When this program is running, the desktop icons will be displayed for only five seconds by default. Then they disappear. Thanks to that timer, you have enough time to select the icons you need. You can adjust the settings of that timer from one second to three hours. With the option Always on top will keep the program on screen, which is ugly. Better to have it boot minimized so that it ends up in the system tray.
More options
Rather than relying on the timer, it is possible to bring up hidden icons by clicking the left, middle or right mouse button on the desktop. Below the button More options are even more interesting settings. Here you can, for example, indicate that the icons appear when the mouse pointer is above the desktop. To close the program completely, use the button # Shut down.
Conclusion
The setup of AutoHideDesktopIcons seems too simple for words, but once you get used to it, this is a handy tweak for your desktop. It makes the work environment quieter and you enjoy the desktop photo of cat Minoes so much more, without all kinds of icons getting in the way.
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