Clean Up Your Desktop

I want to ask you a personal question: how many icons—not counting local disks, network volumes, and removable media—are on your desktop right now? I usually try to keep my own number close to zero, just like my inbox. But I know lots of people who regularly have dozens or even hundreds of icons on their desktops, who use it as a catchall for downloaded files, work in progress, and everything else that needs a temporary home. This is a bad idea! Here’s why:

• macOS considers every icon on your desktop a window, and because every window uses up a certain amount of RAM, more desktop icons means greater RAM usage.

• Mission Control shortcuts notwithstanding, putting files and folders on your desktop makes them harder to find, because they’re so easily hidden behind windows. (You can access the contents of your Desktop folder in a regular Finder window, but many people put items on the desktop to avoid working with Finder windows.)

• Your desktop displays files and folders only as icons, whereas Finder windows enable the more efficient list and column views. (Yes, I know, you can view the contents of your Desktop folder in a Finder window too, but work with me here…)

• Tossing lots of files into a single big storage area (wherever it may be) creates more work later on when you try to locate specific files.

• If you use your desktop to hold important items that you want to keep “in your face” at all times, you’ll lose that effect when the files become too numerous.

A cluttered desktop slows you down, so take a few minutes once a week to organize most (if not all) the items on your desktop into other folders.

I know of numerous organizational philosophies, but I have no wish to impose a rigid system on you. Instead, simply consider these suggestions for keeping files off your desktop:

• If your chief concern is keeping track of a few important files, use the Finder’s Tags feature (select a file and choose a colored tag from the bottom of the File menu, or choose File > Tags to enter custom tags). Mark all high-priority files with a given color or tag name. Then, use the per-tag smart folders in the Finder window sidebar to display all files on your disk with that tag. These folders automatically—and continuously—update themselves to display all the files tagged with the selected color or name, wherever they may be stored on your disk.

• Safari and Mail are preconfigured to store downloaded files in ~/Downloads, which also appears in your Dock. Set up your other browsers and internet apps to use the same folder.

• If you’re accustomed to storing downloaded files on your desktop, instead create an alias to your ~/Downloads folder and put that on your desktop.

• Check your desktop for files you no longer need, such as software you’ve already installed, PDFs you downloaded and saved elsewhere, or outdated text clippings, and delete them.

• Numerous macOS apps function as excellent snippet keepers, giving you a much better place to store things that might otherwise go on your desktop (URLs, saved webpages, text clippings, PDF and text files, recipes, and so on). Examples include:

  • DEVONthink (Figure 11; comes in Personal, Pro, and Pro Office editions)

  

  • EagleFiler

  • Evernote

  • OneNote

  • Yojimbo

One way or another, try to get your total number of desktop icons below a dozen or so. You’ll be surprised how much this simple step improves your efficiency (and possibly even your Mac’s performance).

Empty Your Downloads Folder

In the previous topic I suggested that you keep downloads from your web browser somewhere other than on your desktop (such as in your ~/Downloads folder), the better to keep your Desktop folder clean. But if you download a lot of files, simply moving the clutter from one folder to another does little to improve the situation. So I suggest that, in addition to segregating your downloads, you go through this folder (wherever you keep it) once a week and empty it. In other words, use it as a sort of inbox, not as a long-term storage place. You’ll save space on your disk and make it easier to find your most recent downloads.

Here are some suggestions for trimming a bulging Downloads folder:

• For software you’ve already installed that you could easily download again at any time, delete the disk image or installer.

• Software, or other items, that you haven’t looked at in more than a week probably aren’t very important; consider deleting them.

• If the folder contains software that you may need to reinstall in the near future or that you can’t easily download again (perhaps because of its size), move it to a separate folder (called Installers, for example) to archive it.

• Import downloaded media—videos, music, photos, and so on—into iTunes, Photos, or another app and delete the originals.

• For anything else, if you can’t find a suitable place to store it on your disk, consider putting it in a snippet keeper such as DEVONthink or Evernote, as discussed in the previous topic.

Update Your Bootable Duplicate

You already back up important changed files at least once a day (see Update Your Versioned Backup), but a thorough backup plan also includes a bootable duplicate of your entire hard disk, which enables you to recover almost instantly from even a complete drive failure, with all your files intact—or at least as up to date as your most recent backup. You can certainly update this duplicate more often if you prefer (I update mine twice a day), but for most people, I suggest updating your duplicate at least once a week, so that it reflects a fairly recent state of your disk and requires less work to recover from a data loss.

If you configured your backup software to run on a schedule (see Set Up a Backup System), your duplicate will update itself automatically. If you opted for manual duplicates (or if the drive you use for duplicates isn’t always connected), update your duplicate now.

Rotate Physical Backups Offsite

In Set Up a Backup System, I recommended keeping a copy of your backups somewhere offsite. That way, if disaster strikes your home or office and takes out one of your backups, you have another to fall back on. You may choose to create offsite backups by using an online backup service, such as Backblaze. If so, your files are automatically stored safely offsite and you don’t have to do anything further.

However, if you instead use multiple local backup drives, one of those should go offsite. If you swap your backup drives weekly, you’ll rest secure knowing that even in the worst possible case, you’ll lose no more than one week’s data.

Today, after your backup software updates your versioned backups and bootable duplicate, make the switch. Move the most recently used drive to another building, such as a friend’s house or your office (if your computer is at home). Then, bring back the drive you stored there last week, and you’ll be ready for a new round of backups. You might even agree to a swap arrangement with a friend: every week you trade hard drives, giving each of you an offsite location for your data while keeping it in trusted hands.

Install App Store Software Updates

Assuming you enabled the relevant preferences, your Mac checks for new versions of any Apple or third-party software that you installed from the App Store and (at your option) downloads them automatically. As I mentioned in Check for Software Updates, though, you may want to hold off on installing downloaded updates so you can verify that they contain no serious flaws.

When you’re ready to install the updates, do the following:

1. Choose Apple  > App Store.

2. When the App Store app opens, click Updates (in the sidebar in Mojave or later, or on the toolbar in High Sierra or earlier) to display the Updates view. If no updates are available, the App Store app displays a message to that effect; quit the app, and skip the remaining steps.

3. To update a single app, click the Update button next to it. (In some cases, Apple groups multiple software updates together; click the More link to see details on each one.) Or, to update all the listed apps at once, click Update All.

4. If you were already signed in with your Apple ID, you shouldn’t be prompted to authenticate again, but if you are prompted, enter your Apple ID and password, and click Sign In.

The App Store installs the updates (after downloading them, if it wasn’t configured to do so automatically).

Check for Other Software Updates

Many third-party apps that don’t come from the App Store have built-in automatic update checkers that give you the option of postponing an update until a more convenient time. But some apps check only when you explicitly tell them to. Therefore, take a few minutes to launch your most frequently used apps and use their Check for Updates features (see Update Third-Party Software for more information). Download and install any free updates now, following the developers’ instructions.

Restart Your Mac

Some people turn off their Macs whenever they aren’t in use, either to save electricity or simply out of habit. Others leave them on all the time, on the basis that sleep mode uses a trivially small amount of energy and enables you to get back to work more quickly. (I fall into the latter group, turning off my Macs only when I go on vacation, or whenever I expect to be away from them for more than a day.)

If you leave your Mac on all the time, you may find that over a period of days or weeks its performance slowly degrades. One common reason for this phenomenon is memory leaks (see RAM Usage), but other kinds of bugs can also lead to excessive RAM and CPU usage that gradually bogs down your system. In addition, as you use your Mac it may create an increasing number of virtual memory swap files on your hard disk if you run low on physical RAM; the more of these files actively in use, the slower your computer runs.

So, once a week—or any time you notice that your Mac doesn’t seem as peppy as usual—restart (by choosing Apple  > Restart). If you use lots of resource-intensive apps and have a slower machine with comparatively little RAM, you may need to restart as frequently as every day; if you never notice any slowdowns, once every few weeks may be adequate. You be the judge.

I talk more about keeping an eye on potential performance problems later, in Monitor Your Mac’s Health.

Check Your Spam Mailbox

Earlier, in Empty Your Inbox, I urged you to use spam filtering—either on your email server or with software on your Mac such as SpamSieve—to reduce the number of messages in your inbox. Unfortunately, no spam filter is perfect. Even the best will occasionally mark legitimate messages as spam; this is called a false positive. Most spam filters move suspected spam to a Spam or Junk mailbox, the idea being that you can scan this mailbox from time to time in order to correct any mistakes and retrieve these false positives.

My spam filters are extremely smart and accurate, but even so, I get an average of about one or two false positives per week. Some of these messages mislabeled as spam are in fact quite important, and I don’t like people thinking I’m ignoring them just because a filter got hung up on some random word or phrase in their message. So I suggest doing what I do—once a week or so, scan the contents of your Spam or Junk mailbox. If you find any good messages, use whatever procedure your email client or spam filter offers to mark them as Not Junk and move them back to your inbox. Then you can delete everything else in the Spam or Junk mailbox.

Depending on the volume of email you receive—and the frequency with which you get false positives—you may want to do this more or less frequently than once a week.