Desktop Icon Labels

Hello,
iMac 21.5 (Late 2012) Yosemite 10.10.2
I would like to "do away with" the LABELS on the desktop icons for my external drives. I like the icons being there, but I do NOT like the labels. I have created icons that represent each external drive, (actual pictures of the physical device) and that is all I need for identification purposes.
I know and understand that I can simply "rename" them with a "space" (no lettering) and that makes the labels go away, BUT when I do this, it ALSO makes the label go away in Finder Sidebar, and I DO NOT want the label to go away in Finder. (It also makes the label go away in "Get Info")
I am thinking that I need an Applescript to use in Automator to create a Service that would allow me to toggle "off" the fonts on the desktop. I have searched high and low for an app that would do this, but to no avail.
I am VERY new to the world of Apple (Got this iMac late last year-----How in the world did I survive all those years with Windows?????? ;-)
If anyone could share an Applescript and then give me step by step instructions on how to set it up in Automator, that would be GREATLY appreciated.

Hi,
Have you restarted the computer before checking the results?
Also, I suggest you configure this registry key since HKEY_CURRENT_USER is just a mapped one of current user:
HKU\S-1-5-21-************\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\ListviewShadow
Note: Find your user GUID under HKU.
Kate Li
TechNet Community Support

Similar Messages

Is there any way to see full icon label on desktop or in folder?

Is there any way to see full icon label on desktop or in folder...like in windows...for example for "Macintosh HD" I see "Mac...HD", but I want to see "Macinto..."? Is there any way to change this? I have in many folder files with similar names, and I need to click twice on each file to see its full name and it can be really annoying...

In Finder, just drag the divider bar further to the right while holding down the option key to see the full label (using the 'option' key will make the width preference stick).
On the desktop icon, hold down 'contro'l and click on the icon. Choose 'Show view options' then make the grid spacing larger.

Cannot Remove Drop Shadows for Icon Labels on Windows 8.1 Desktop

I have a new Dell Laptop with Windows 8.1 and a touch screen. The Icon labels on the Desktop have black shadows on white text. I have searched for answers and have tried the following, none of which worked. Is there anything else I can try?
Removed the checkmark by "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop" under System Properties, Advanced, Performance Options, Visual Effects tab, clicked on Apply, rebooted. Verfied that the ListViewShadow DWORD value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
is set to 0 (zero).
Made sure that the "Show my desktop background on Start" on the Taskbar and Navigation properties Navigation tab is unchecked.

Hi,
Have you restarted the computer before checking the results?
Also, I suggest you configure this registry key since HKEY_CURRENT_USER is just a mapped one of current user:
HKU\S-1-5-21-************\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\ListviewShadow
Note: Find your user GUID under HKU.
Kate Li
TechNet Community Support

Desktop icons are no longer trusted, custom home directory [solved]

I have my home directory on a raid, and have noticed that after switching it the desktop icons no longer work properly (icons are missing/default blank as well and labeled <filename>.desktop. Even if I create a new launcher on the desktop it still won't work.
For example, I click chromium.desktop, and I get the follow message:
Untrusted application launcher
The application launcher "chromium.desktop" has not been marked as trusted. If you do not know the source of this file, launching it may be unsafe.
Marking it as safe does nothing, launching anyway will work. However, the annoyance of no icons and a <filename>.desktop is rather annoying. If I switch back to my original /home/user$ it works fine again. I even tried binding the raid location to /home/user$ and it still has a problem unless I go back to the original home directory path.
Any thoughts?
Last edited by jskier (2010-06-02 00:48:49)

Removing "user" from the fstab line of the raid fixed this.

[Solved] wy i can place xfce4 desktop icons in a "grid" only?

hello archers!
im in love with xfce4 DE, but the annoying thing is that i can place the desktop icons only in a invisible "grid" of tiles.
i changed the display manager to gdm, but it didn't help. i tryed changing the WM, but didn't not find out how to do that.
Yes, i dont understand how DE's working internal, cause there are so many parts, as DM, WM, session-manager, and so on, which confuses me.
So how i can place my icons individually on the desktop?
Thanks in advance!!
Last edited by xfce-tux (2011-09-12 21:13:34)

Another way to adjust the desktop grid size settings and more.
Source: http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfdesktop/tree/README
HIDDEN CUSTOMISATIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you're using the icon view, and would like to change how the text looks,
you have three things you can change: the opacity (transparency) of the
rounded text background, the color of the rounded text background, and the
color of the text itself.
You'd want to add something like this to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file:
style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 75
XfdesktopIconView::selected-label-alpha = 100
XfdesktopIconVIew::ellipsize-icon-labels = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-x-offset = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-y-offset = 1
XfdesktopIconView::shadow-color = "#ff0000"
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-x-offset = 2
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-y-offset = 2
XfdesktopIconView::selected-shadow-color = "#00ff00"
XfdesktopIconVIew::cell-spacing = 6
XfdesktopIconView::cell-padding = 6
XfdesktopIconView::cell-text-width-proportion = 2.5
base[NORMAL] = "#00ff00"
base[SELECTED] = "#5050ff"
base[ACTIVE] = "#0000ff"
fg[NORMAL] = "#ff0000"
fg[SELECTED] = "#ff0000"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#ff0000"
widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"
The first three entries set the opacity of the rounded text background
(allowed values are from 0 (totally transparent) to 255 (totally opaque),
and whether or not unselected icons get their labels ellipsized
(truncated) to fit on one line. (The 'selected-' version controls the
opacity of icons that have been selected with the mouse.)
The second six entries can be used to enable a text shadow to be painted
with the icon labels. The offsets are in pixels. Setting them to 0 (the
defaults) will disable the shadows entirely. Again, the 'selected-'
versions apply to icons that have been selected with the mouse.
The third four entries set spacing and sizing for individual icons on
the grid. The 'cell-spacing' property specifies the spacing between each
'cell' in the grid of icons. The 'cell-padding' property sets extra
padding placed around each icon+text. The units for these two are in
pixels. The 'cell-text-width-proportion' property specifies the maximum
width of the text label underneat the icon, as a multiplier of the icon
width (so for 30px icons, '2.5' would leave a 75px wide area underneath
for the text).
The fourth three entries set the color of the rounded text background.
* NORMAL sets the color for the regular, unselected state.
* SELECTED sets the color for when the icon is selected, and the desktop has
keyboard/mouse focus.
* ACTIVE sets the color for when the icon is selected, but the desktop does
not have keyboard/mouse focus.
The final three entries set the color of the label text. See above for the
differences between NORMAL, SELECTED, and ACTIVE.

Problem with desktop icon moving

Whenever I restart my computer, the "Macintosh HD" icon moves to become the bottom icon out of my list of icons, leaving the top right space empty where it usually should be. This has been happening for about a week after having my computer for three months.
Any idea why this is happening?
thanks.

Welcome To Discussions aburi!
Positioning Desktop icons, too close to the edge of the screen, will cause them to reposition themselves on restart.
Positioning them too close to each other, will cause this as well.
Depending on how many you have displayed, and the size of your screen, the Size of the icons, as well as the Text size & Label position can also factor in. Experiment with these settings.
My Desktop icons do not reposition themselves, and this is how I have my Desktop View Options set.
Icon size: 32 x 32
Text size: 12 pt
Label position: Bottom
I have none of the following options selected.
Snap to grid
Show item info
Show icon preview
Keep arranged by
A different configuration may work for you. Experiment with the options until you find something suitable.
Click on an open area of your Desktop.
From the Finder's Toolbar, position your cursor over "View" and pull down to "Show View Options", and click. Or use the Command + J keys.
ali b

Recycle bin and Desktop icon ini file

Hello hope this is in the right section, Toshiba P750 Laptop,
Every drive has a recycle bin which is annoying as my last laptop didnt have it, I cant remove the folder, C drive is fine.
Also there is a desktop icon system ini folder my libraries folders somtimes 2 of them which is annoying me as well, I delete them next day there back, any idea how to fix this woulkd be appreciated.
Thanks
Regards
Solved!
Go to Solution.

When you elect to show hidden files, you'll see things like the $Recycle.Bin folders and desktop.ini files. That's just the way Windows works.
Desktop.ini files, BTW, are what tell Windows Explorer how to lie about what it sees in a folder.
Show hidden files
When you post here, always tell us which Satellite P750 you have. See the label on the bottom.
-Jerry

Desktop Icons change at start-up

This is just a minor problem but it is bothering me. Everytime (or it seems like everytime) I (re)start my computer, I get to the desktop and the Macintosh HD icon has moved from it's original location in the upper right of the desktop. What is the reason for this? I find this quite odd. I recently had to do an erase and install so anything I am noticing that is out of the ordinary I am raising questions about. Thank you.

Hi mrescobar11!
Positioning Desktop icons, too close to the edge of the screen, will cause them to reposition themselves on restart.
Positioning them too close to each other, will cause this as well.
Depending on how many you have displayed, and the size of your screen, the Size of the icons, as well as the Text size & Label position can also factor in. Experiment with these settings.
My Desktop icons do not reposition themselves, and this is how I have my Desktop View Options set.
Icon size: 32 x 32
Text size: 12 pt
Label position: Bottom
I have none of the following options selected.
Snap to grid
Show item info
Show icon preview
Keep arranged by
A different configuration may work for you. Experiment with the options until you find something suitable.
Click on an open area of your Desktop.
From the Finder's Toolbar, position your cursor over "View" and pull down to "Show View Options", and click. Or use the Command + J keys.
ali b

Orphan desktop icon, probably from Safari download

I am a new user of Safari 3.1 under WinXP 5.1.2600.
I have an icon on my desktop that I can't get rid of. I believe it's from an aborted Safari download. When I try to delete or rename it, I get a window titled "Error Deleting File or Folder", with text "Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk." I can move the icon around the desktop, but cannot move it to another folder.
Later I had to abort a Safari download and got the same situation: another orphan icon. This time I restarted the download and when it completed, BOTH of the downloads turned into regular icons (labeled WinRAR in this case) and I was able to deal with them normally. This is why I think the orphan icon is also from a Safari download. It has extension ".rar." ending with a period. I imagine the original name might have ended with ".rar.download" since that is the way Safari labels files in the process of downloading, before they are complete.
Any help anyone can offer will be welcome. I would use Liquid Paper on the screen, but then I wouldn't be able to see my wallpaper.

go into windows safe mode and throw it in the trash can that should do the trick if it doesn't then I'm out of ideas here.

Changing font under desktop icons

Something kind of screwy has been going on with the font under my desktop icons for a while now. It's totally different from the font that the rest of my system uses. I'm not entirely sure what font it is, but it looks a lot like the font that terminal uses. It's white and outlined in black when I don't use a color label, and then turns really skinny and black when I do use a color label. Is there any way to revert back to the original font? Thanks.

Hi Joseph,
If you mean Font Finagler, then no, that won't change your fonts. David was saying his fonts weren't displaying properly, which Font Finagler may fix by removing corrupt font cache files.
It sounds like you want to actually change the fonts the system uses for its display. The only haxie I know of that can do that is Silk.

Desktop Icons Arrangement/Location

Please excuse me, but I have been searching and cannot find an answer...which I am pretty sure is here because its basic.
How can I change the alignment of my desktop icons. They are all on the right and I would like them in another area of the screen. How can I lock them there?
Thanks and I apologize about the elementary question.
S

You can Label them by right-clicking in the folder and choosing a Label color.
And you can change their color completely by using something like http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15288/folderbrander.
Or if you can find a set of colored folders online, you can change them manually by using this method.
http://www.mactricksandtips.com/2007/06/changing-folder-icon.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2493 - This link is down it seems.
Thanks for the "Solved", but I think leroyduoglas is the one who should've gotten it

Desktop Icon Font Colors

Is there any way to change the color of the labels for icons on the desktop?
My desktop background is mostly white, making the white icon labels unattractive and difficult to read. I have been looking for solutions, but so far, I have only seen ways to change the font style, not the color. Also, I am only interested in changing settings for the desktop, not my entire system.

Hello,
Try here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2493?viewlocale=en_US and here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/
Carolyn

Restart rearranges desktop icons

This has been going on for awhile and for the life of me I cannot figure out why when I restart my computer, all of my desktop icons rearrange themselves. How do I get them to stay put? I'm running 10.6.8

That's no good.
Back up all data now.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.
Step 1
If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. You can demote it back to standard status when this step has been completed.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:20 ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ 2> /dev/null
Be sure to select the whole line by triple-clicking anywhere in it. You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. You don't need to post the warning. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command.
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.
Step 2
Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar. A text window opens.
In the Terminal window, type this:
resetpassword
That's one word with no spaces. Then press return. A Reset Password window opens. You’re not going to reset a password.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.

Lion: limited room for name desktop icons?

Lion seems to reserve only one line underneath a desktop icon for its name (OS 10.6 two). Names are also shortend if they threathen to get as wide as the icon size. It means you can only use short folder names.
With the smalles fontsize (10) you need an icon size of at least 100x100 to be able to use a proper name. That's a rediculous icon size, even on a 1680x1050 screen.
I store frequently used items in folders on my desktop. Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Or am i missing something?
Jerry.

If you haven't already done so, try clicking on the Desktop, type command-J, and in the resulting View Options window, increase the "Grid Spacing." If the Grid Spacing is set too low, you will lose the second line of the label as well as the middle portion of the text:

Help! Desktop icons gone, no right click ... and Nautilus crashes!

I have a fully upgraded Gnome-based system, and all of a sudden my desktop icons disappeared, clicking on the desktop does nothing, and every time I use Nautilus it crashes with the error (from bug report):
Distribution: Unknown
Gnome Release: 2.24.3 2009-01-20 (Archlinux)
BugBuddy Version: 2.24.2
System: Linux 2.6.28-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jan 18 20:17:17 UTC 2009 i686
X Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Vendor Release: 10503000
Selinux: No
Accessibility: Disabled
GTK+ Theme: Glider
Icon Theme: Foxtrot
Memory status: size: 0 vsize: 0 resident: 0 share: 0 rss: 0 rss_rlim: 0
CPU usage: start_time: 0 rtime: 0 utime: 0 stime: 0 cutime:0 cstime: 0 timeout: 0 it_real_value: 0 frequency: 0
----------- .xsession-errors (6 sec old) ---------------------
seahorse nautilus module initialized
** (nautilus:9421): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Not supported
** (nautilus:9421): WARNING **: Unable to add monitor: Not supported
--- Hash table keys for warning below:
--> file:///home/user
--> file:///home
(nautilus:9421): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-metafile.c: metafiles" hash table still has 2 elements at quit time (keys above)
(nautilus:9421): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-directory.c: directories" hash table still has 2 elements at quit time
seahorse nautilus module shutdown
Shutting down nautilus-open-terminal extension
It doesn't seem to be an options or configuration thing, maybe more like some sort of corruption? The Panels are fine. I have checked desktop and Nautilus options using Gconf and tried recreating ~/.gconf etc. The only suspicious occurrence was when, in the middle of a pacman -Syu, I was thrown back to the GDM login prompt. I just logged in again and did another pacman -Syu and everything seemed okay.
By the way, running Nautilus as root does show root's desktop okay, but Nautilus still crashes.
Any help would be most welcome for a very frustrating problem!
PS: Forgot to say that I'd tried reinstalling quite a few Gnome things and Nautilus, with no effect.
Also, the problem persists after restarting X, logon, reboot, power-off ...
Last edited by ninian (2009-01-21 09:35:05)

Uh-oh, seems like this problem could go wider than I thought. There's a fairly lengthy thread on the Ubuntu forums which smells the same, for example:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p= … stcount=42 =>
Re: Desktop icons disappear
Got it! I can get a crash with this:
Code:
mkdir ~/test
cp /usr/share/applications/compiz.desktop ~/test/
nautilus ~/test
I'm going to leave a comment in the bug.
And in fact, I was mucking around with .desktop files when I think my icons went AWOL.
Anyone else brave enough to risk losing their desktop to try this out?!

Desktop Icon Labels

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