Show HN: Shade. A Free Mac App to hide your messy desktop. (opens in new tab)

I've been using a Mac for over a year, and I've never had more than a few things on the desktop, whereas my Windows 7 boxes sometimes ran into the problem that Shade is addressing.

Seems like OSX is much friendlier to organization and discovery. With Spotlight and tools like Alfred, all my apps and files are pretty much always a few keystrokes away, so storing stuff on the desktop becomes suboptimal.

I hide/show my desktop icons with a couple of aliases in my .zshrc:

  alias dihide="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool NO && killall Finder"
  alias dishow="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool YES && killall Finder"

This has a couple side effects: clicking on the desktop background doesn't steal focus from the current app, and you can no longer drop files onto the desktop. It doesn't have a pretty UI, but since I've got a terminal open almost all the time, it's just as convenient to me as a menu bar item.

Cool app, I just installed it. Some feedback: Would be nice if double click shade desktop would show real desktop. Clicking the icon isn't always handy.

Just earlier this week I was looking for an app that did exactly this. Installed it - works great. I'd also be keen to see a 'double-click to reveal' feature. Great work!

Lacks dual screen support. Hence, I will still be stuck with BackDrop (works too, not as nice)

Hey OP, I love the simplicity, giving it a try. I added your app to http://retinamacapps.com -- nice work!

Cool idea, I would definitely use it, but it seems that when using Spaces Shade will only cover a single space at a time.

I keep my stuff in ~/, not in ~/Desktop.

Curious, how long that take to develop? You done many osx apps before?