For many computer users, the desktop acts as a digital dumping ground. Every screenshot you take, every PDF you download, and every image you drag off a website defaults to saving on the desktop. Over a few months, this results in a chaotic, unreadable mess of overlapping icons that makes finding a specific file impossible. Instead of manually dragging dozens of files into folders every week, you can use a built-in macOS feature called “Stacks” to instantly organize your desktop with a single click.
What are Desktop Stacks?
Stacks is a feature introduced in macOS Mojave that automatically groups all the loose files on your desktop into neat, organized piles based on their file type. For example, it will gather all your loose `.png` and `.jpg` files into a single stack called “Images,” and all your `.pdf` and `.docx` files into a stack called “Documents.”
How to Turn On Stacks
Activating Stacks takes exactly two clicks.
- Right-click (or Control-click) anywhere on an empty, blank space on your Mac desktop wallpaper.
- From the context menu that appears, click Use Stacks.
Instantly, the chaos on your screen will vanish. All of your loose files will fly across the screen and assemble into neat piles on the right-hand side of your monitor, directly underneath your hard drive icon. (Note: Stacks only affect loose files; any actual folders you created on the desktop will remain exactly where they were).
How to Use and Navigate Stacks
Stacks are designed to be dynamic and easy to browse without actually opening them.
- To view the contents of a Stack: Simply click on the stack once. It will elegantly expand, displaying all the files it contains on your desktop. You can then double-click a specific file to open it. Click the stack’s main icon again (which now has a small arrow pointing down) to collapse the pile.
- To scrub through a Stack: You do not even need to open a stack to see what is inside it. Hover your mouse cursor over a stack and swipe left or right with two fingers on your trackpad (or use a Magic Mouse swipe). The top icon on the stack will rapidly cycle through all the files contained within it.
Customizing How Stacks are Grouped
By default, macOS groups your Stacks by “Kind” (file type). However, if you are working on a massive project and saving hundreds of files a day, sorting them by date is often much more useful.
- Right-click on an empty space on your desktop.
- Hover your mouse over Group Stacks By.
- Select your preferred grouping method from the menu:
- Kind: Groups by Images, Documents, Screenshots, PDFs, etc.
- Date Last Opened: Groups into piles like “Today,” “Previous 7 Days,” and “Previous 30 Days.”
- Date Added: Excellent for finding a file you just downloaded five minutes ago.
- Tags: If you use the macOS color-coded tag system, it will group files by their assigned color tags.
Because Stacks is an active system feature, any new file you save to the desktop going forward will instantly bypass the open screen and fly directly into its correct, categorized stack.