If your Mac desktop is completely covered in scattered screenshots, downloaded PDFs, and assorted image files, finding what you need can be a nightmare. A cluttered desktop not only harms your productivity but can also slightly impact your Mac’s performance, as macOS treats every single icon on the desktop as an individual window to render.
Apple solved this problem with a brilliant, built-in feature called Stacks. Introduced in macOS Mojave, Stacks automatically organises your chaotic desktop into neat, categorised piles with a single click.
How to Enable Stacks on Your Mac Desktop
Turning on Stacks is incredibly simple and completely reversible if you decide you don’t like it.
- Close or minimize any open windows so you have a clear view of your desktop wallpaper.
- Right-click (or hold Control and click) on any empty space on your desktop.
- From the context menu that appears, click on Use Stacks.
Instantly, all the files scattered across your screen will fly to the right side of your monitor and group themselves into neat stacks based on their file type. Your folders will remain untouched and sit below the new stacks.
How to Navigate and Use Stacks
Once your files are stacked, interacting with them is highly intuitive.
- Opening a Stack: Simply click once on a stack (for example, the “Screenshots” stack). The stack will visually expand, revealing all the individual files inside it right on your desktop. Click the stack icon again to collapse them back into a pile.
- Scrubbing through a Stack: You don’t even need to open a stack to see what’s inside. Hover your mouse cursor over a stack and swipe left or right with two fingers on your trackpad (or scroll with your mouse wheel). The icon at the top of the stack will flip through the files within it. When you see the file you want, double-click it to open it.
How to Customise How Stacks are Grouped
By default, macOS groups your desktop files by Kind (putting all images together, all PDFs together, etc.). However, you can change this sorting behaviour to suit your specific workflow.
- Right-click on an empty space on your desktop again.
- Hover your mouse over Group Stacks By.
- A sub-menu will appear with several options:
- Kind: (Default) Sorts by file type (Images, Documents, Spreadsheets).
- Date Last Opened: Groups files into timeframes like “Today,” “Previous 7 Days,” or “Previous 30 Days.” This is excellent for keeping track of recent work.
- Date Added: Groups files based on exactly when they were saved to the desktop.
- Date Modified: Groups files based on when you last made changes to them.
- Tags: If you use macOS colour tags to organize your projects, this will group your files by their assigned tag.
By using Stacks, you can save everything to your desktop without guilt, knowing macOS will automatically keep it impeccably tidy.
