Version Tested : 0.1 beta
Compatibility : Win All (probably)
Description : The best one click hide desktop icons solution around. It sits in the tray , and with one click, all your desktop icons are gone. Another click, and they are restored. No waiting, no flashing desktops, no messing around. Instant hide and show.
For quite a while now, I’ve been looking around for some tool that can hide and show desktop icons without flashing, or messing anything else around, or taking about 10 seconds to actually do the the job, or without hiding my desktop widgets at the same time! As you can probably tell by that long sentence, I’m rather demanding (or not).
This very simple app does exactly what I ask, with no messing around. Hides and shows the desktop icons without a hitch. One single click on the icon in the tray icon and your icons are hidden before you even hear the sound of your mouse’s click button come up… or, immediately is a good description too.
I found it when looking around the Donation Coder forum asking for such an app, when one member kindly said they had their own tool for it. I promptly asked for the link and downloaded.
Despite being called Desktop Tools, it has only the one function, and I have never seen a simpler app that caters for the one solution. This is what AppAholic is really all about! Big thumbs up to the designer Rich!
There are a few other bits of freeware out there that claim to do the same job. Well they do hide and show the desktop icons, however not how I would like or at the speed I would like. One of them makes my Yahoo Widgets vanish as well, not how I wanted it! The other, it takes 5 seconds, flickers lots, takes a chunk of CPU, then makes them vanish.
Desktop Tools hides your desktop icons, just like that. So fast you really don’t have time to blink! There is however only the one catch. (Yes, sorry). It takes up between 13 and 15 Meg of RAM. That’s quite a large chunk for such a little app. I’m wondering why its so high. I’ll have a word with the author and see if I can find out at some point.
When used along with an app like Launchy (to launch it when needed), then the memory usage isn’t really that big an issue if you only want to use it on the odd occasion. If you have plenty of ram spare, then you could even add it to your start up!
Conclusion : Hide and show desktop icons at the click of a button, and as fast as a click of a button. No waiting around for any time at all. Takes up a bit of RAM, but if you have some to spare and you only want to use it once in a while, then its not a problem. Even if you do want to use it more often, its speed is worth the RAM usage I find. Better than the rest, fastest icon hider in the west.
Website : www.richsomerfield.com
Download : (see website, then click software)
Size : 45.8 KB
Try DeskSweeper 2.0
Roger said this on January 26th, 2008 at 1:08 am
hey haven’t you tried iconoid
works in win xp and vista
great utility to see the beauty of the wallpaper
salki said this on January 29th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Hi, I wrote this tool. It is written using C# and I’ve tried to get the memory down, but no matter what I do it is always above 12MB. I’ll try and re-write it in C++ to solve the problem.
RichS said this on February 8th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Ok, new tool is available. It is called IconHider, only takes up 1MB and is available from the same link above (www.richsomerfield.com).
RichS said this on February 20th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Софт | Сайт журнала «Домашний ПК» said this on March 4th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
App to Hide Your Desktop Icons | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10 said this on March 7th, 2008 at 12:32 am
About to try it out.
To the program author: how about some info on your programs at your site? : )
kus said this on March 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Desktop Tools - Hiding Desktop Icons… Just Like That | AppAholic said this on June 9th, 2008 at 1:05 am
I installed the high ram using one. Do I need to uninstall it, or just never run it?
Thanks…
Wes said this on October 12th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hey Wes, yeh. The last time i looked in the download, it was just an exe. I set that exe to run on start up, and so it appears in my system tray as you would expect. if you dont know how to set up a new start up programme, if you look at categories on this site, under utilities, start up managers, you should find some help.
Rel
relequestual said this on October 12th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
App to Hide Your Desktop Icons | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10 said this on December 31st, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Now I think it helps that Ms. ,
Maxx14 said this on October 22nd, 2009 at 4:11 pm
App to Hide Your Desktop Icons | Cool Stuff | Channel 9 said this on November 10th, 2010 at 10:49 am