If you like to keep your Mac desktop highly organized, you might occasionally find that your carefully placed files and folders suddenly rearrange themselves into strange, colored groups. This happens because macOS features a powerful desktop sorting tool called “Stacks,” which can automatically group items by Kind, Date, or Tags.
While grouping by “Kind” (putting all images in one pile and all PDFs in another) is useful, grouping by “Tags” is often chaotic. If you download files from the internet that contain hidden metadata tags, or if you accidentally assigned a red tag to a single folder three years ago, macOS will aggressively shuffle your entire desktop to group those items together. You can disable this automatic organization.
How to Stop macOS from Grouping Desktop Files by Tags
You must turn off the “Use Stacks” feature directly from the Desktop view options.
- Close or minimize all your open windows so you are looking at your bare Mac Desktop.
- Right-click (or Control-click) anywhere on the empty desktop wallpaper.
- In the context menu that appears, look for the option labelled Use Stacks.
- If there is a checkmark next to “Use Stacks,” click on it to deselect it.
- If you still want to use Stacks but absolutely hate the “Tags” grouping, right-click the desktop again and hover over Group Stacks By.
- Change the selection from “Tags” to Kind or None.
If you completely disabled “Use Stacks,” your files will immediately disperse back to their original, absolute positions on your screen. You can now drag and drop files exactly where you want them, and macOS will never automatically reorganize them into colored tag piles again.