How to sort Desktop Icons with One Click

When you create or save a new file, it is very tempting to postpone and think about organizing the folders later. You will forget about it and then find yourself desperately looking for that file. Inevitably, you will one day find your desktop screen full of icons, cluttered and confusing.

Especially if you are not an expert, this chaos could make things even more difficult. Don’t despair! There are several possibilities to order desktop icons with one click. Let’s see how to do it. Sorting icons within a desktop on your computer is straightforward, especially with a simple click. In this guide, we see how to sort desktop icons with one click.

Obviously, this procedure is available in most operating systems and especially in all computers. The procedure could change only with Apple computers and with the iOS operating system.

The right mouse text

The first possibility is the simplest and most immediate, perhaps also the best known. Clicking the right mouse button anywhere on the screen will open a small drop-down menu, the desktop management panel.

The first three items of the panel concern the arrangement of the icons. Let’s see them together. Obviously, this is the best solution and above all the simplest one since it is available in all computers, even in those marked Apple and iOS operating systems.

The choice of icons

The first step of the drop-down menu carries the wording display and allows you to choose the size of the file icons (to choose between small, medium, and large) and arrange them on the screen.

By choosing ” arrange icons automatically,” all the icons will be placed in order automatically on the screen from left to right, based on a criterion that can be selected with the second drop-down menu available, also selecting the option ” align icons to the grid ” when you want to move an icon it will be placed directly in axis with the others, giving an idea of order and avoiding that two icons overlap.

Sometimes the overlapping icons could be confusing or hiding important things. Once the drop-down menu opens, we can choose both the icons’ size within our desktop, small to large, and our own provisions. Arrangements range from the oldest or newest dated icon or even by size.

The sorting

As we said, the second menu, ” sort by, “will allow you to choose in what order you want your icons to be arranged on the desktop; here are the possibilities:

• By name: the icons will be sorted in a few seconds alphabetical order and by type (first the folders, then the. Pdf files, then the images, then the word files, etc.).
• By size: the icons will be arranged by size, remaining grouped by type.
• By element type: the icons will be automatically organized also in alphabetical order.
• Last modified: the icons will be sorted according to the last time you used or modified them.

Sorting is also essential because it is the main topic of the guide. Obviously, as we said before, the ordering of the icons is based on the date and based on the type of file or even based on its size or rather its size.

The command ” update.”

The third available command is labeled ” update ” and is used if you later add other files on the screen to sort them according to the criteria used the last time you sorted all your files on the desktop. In a few words, the icons will be aligned with the files already sorted previously without having to choose and re-select all the commands from the menu.

This will save you time and keep the desktop in order according to your preferred criteria. Obviously, the update command is for us when we tend to insert new files into the desktop and still keep them in order. For this reason, when we insert a type of file using the update button, the inserted file is automatically put in the right place.

External programs

If you want to arrange the icons in a more ” creative ” way or according to your own criteria, you can rely on specialized programs available for free on the Internet, such as Shock Desktop, a free program that allows you to order desktop icons in the shape of a heart, star, or even with unusual geometric shapes (hexagon, octagon, ellipse).

Download the program and follow the instructions. It is effortless and intuitive. External programs are beneficial if we want to put the scattered icons inside our desktop creatively. Obviously, to do this, it is essential to download an external program on the PC.