How to Auto-Arrange Desktop Icons?

Question

How do I enable auto-arrange (not just "auto-align") for desktop icons, like in Windows?

Solution 1

There's no such feature to enable in Ubuntu. See this wishlist bug report about the feature request (it's from 2005...).

Solution 2

I wrote iconic to solve this problem by letting you define a grid size larger than the icons. Additionally it will:

• Allow you to move icons to any of three monitors
• Not suffer the "lost icon syndrome" that occurs when monitors of multiple resolutions are used
• Sort icons alphabetically, alphabetically with "Link to" prefix ignored, sort by modified date ascending or date descending
• Allow different grid size (columns x rows) depending on monitor, EG more on 4K monitor than 2K monitor
• Instant Test button for quick experimentation on column x row changes or reserved space changes for monitor left, top, right or bottom areas
• Test button will last for x seconds defined by you, clear all windows before test and restore them after test
• Bash script for easy modifications

You can get the script on github.

Here's the main screen:

Visit the github page for iconic to see all the other screens, explanations and a copy of the script.

Solution 3

Just a little modification for Ubuntu 17.04, you need to right click, select Keep Aligned and then Organise Desktop By Name.

Solution 4

Wow, 10 year old question, and it's still a relevant search result. In the latest LTS (at time of writing!) Ubuntu 20.04, the used the half-baked desktop-icons Gnome Shell extension, which is missing many basic features, like drag-and-drop interaction with Nautilus. Reading posts, forums, and issue tracker complaints, I gather than this is because decision-makers of some kind decreed that desktop icons are an antipattern and they would prefer not to support them at all.

But, there's a fork of their desktop-icons extension called "Desktop Icons NG (DING)" that solves the drag-and-drop, but development seems to be slow, s.t. newer version of it are not compatible with newer versions of Gnome Shell (what?), so their v18 addition of the arrangement feature is not available in the v17 that gets installed on my Ubuntu. (Why anyone would develop against the upstream version of Gnome, that gets used by approximately 1% of of the 1% of the world computer population who use Linux; is beyond me.)

SO! tl;dr, I installed a fork of DING "desktop-icons-neo", and it has all the features you'd expect Ubuntu to have out of the box. Just went to it on the gnome extensions site, flipped the switch to "on", disabled the built-in "Desktop Icons" in the built-in "Extensions" settings app, and then had the desired features in my desktop context menu.

But yeah, Linux will become the dominant desktop operating system any day now, sure.

Solution 5

Right-click on Desktop and click on Clean up by name

View more solutions

Comments

[Nitin Venkatesh]

In 11.04 when you right-click on the desktop there is an option "Organize Desktop By Name". Is that what you were looking for?

[user541686]

@nitstorm: That's likely what I was looking for, except that I have Ubuntu 10.04. :\ I guess I should've mentioned that in the question.

[htorque]

This option has been there for long, but been renamed a couple of times. Maybe it's something like "Cleanup by name" or similar (it should be the one above the auto-align checkbox). However, this is a one-time action and is not triggered automatically.

[Zanna]

Close voters - why? 10.04 was not EOL when this was asked, and it's been answered.

[user541686]

@Zanna: I think this is just how some people get their pleasure in life...

[htorque]

Now, where is the 'auto' part? This changes the icon order exactly once when you trigger it.

[Anders Lindén]

I agree. This answer should be removed.

[fixit7]

I did not see yad being a requirement in the readme. @WinEunuuchs2Unix

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@fixit7 My apologies for the oversight. Did that cause much inconvenience? I hope yad doesn't conflict with other apps. While we are on the subject wmctrl and xdotool are also requirements.

[fixit7]

No problem. I saw that yad is in the script. And the script also told me that yad was not installed. It works ok, but I found it a bit confusing. I was looking for something that would save my icon locations on my desktop. Ubuntu-Mate frequently buggers up their locations.

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@fixit7 Saving the icon positions is a rather minor feature. The bigger ones is aligning icons evenly, sorting icons, stopping them from disappearing on multiple monitors and most especially moving icons to anyone of three monitors. I've updated github README with prerequisites and updated script with minor tweaks made in August and November 2019.

[fixit7]

When I save the config, it is a blank file? @WinEunuuchs2Unix

[WinEunuuchs2Unix]

@fixit7 You mean when you click the Save Icons button? The filename is blank, give it a filename like "My icon settings at work" or "My icon settings June 3 2020" etc.

[sureshvv]

what about the dock?

[Đức Hải Trần]

@sureshvv what dock are you mention? I use dash to panel but I only take screenshot in icon area

[sureshvv]

dock is where all the icons to start programs like browser, open office etc. are kept. I like it on the left of the screen. Some people prefer bottom of screen, Without the dock I don't find the desktop useful.

[Vishwas M.R]

Works on Ubuntu 18.04 as well but not on 20.04!

[Vishwas M.R]

Although this helps in rearranging the icons within the window that the command opens, it does NOT rearrange the icons on the desktop. IMO, not very helpful!