Hiding Icons On The Desktop

Question

I would like to know if it's possible to hid the icons on the desktop (temporarily) so they don't distract me during my "interfacing"....

Answer 1

This works if you want to hide whatever is showing right when you run the command. However, if you want new items placed on the desktop to be hidden as well, you'll need to run the command again. Fortunately, you can use a very simple AppleScript and Folder Action to have this done automatically.
Open up the Script Editor located in:
+/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app+
Paste in the following script:
+on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items+
+do shell script ("chflags hidden ~/Desktop/*")+
+end adding folder items to+
Click the Compile button. Then, click File > Save As... and name it +Hide Desktop+ and save it in the following directory:
+~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts+
(In case you're not familiar, the ~ stands for your Home directory.)
You may need to create the Scripts and Folder Scripts folders if they do not already exist.
Now that you're all set up, you just need to enable the Folder Action. Open Folder Actions Setup located in:
/Applications/AppleScript/Folder Actions Setup.app
Add your Desktop folder by clicking on the + sign in the lower left of the window and selecting your Desktop. Then, select the Hide Desktop.scpt file from the presented list.
You're all done! You can enable and disable the Folder Action whenever you want from the Folder Actions Setup. If you disable it and want to unhide your Desktop files, simply open the terminal and run the command:
+chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/*+
You could even create another ActionScript which was just:
+do shell script ("chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/*")+
You could compile and save that somewhere and just run it whenever you disabled the Hide Desktop Folder Action.