Hide desktop icons for clean screen recordings

You're about to hit record and the desktop behind your app is a landfill of screenshots, half-finished exports, and downloaded PDFs — none of which belong in the final video. macOS has no menu-bar switch or System Settings toggle for hiding desktop icons, but a single Terminal command clears the whole desktop in about two seconds, and one more restores everything exactly where it was.

Clear the desktop before you hit record

Open Terminal (press Cmd+Space, type Terminal, hit Return) and paste this. The killall Finder step just relaunches Finder so the change shows immediately — your open apps and windows are untouched.

# Hide every icon on the desktop
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
killall Finder

The desktop goes clean instantly. Nothing is deleted, nothing moves — every file is still sitting in your Desktop folder, macOS simply stops drawing icons on the wallpaper. Now start your recording (Shift+Cmd+5, or QuickTime, or whatever you use) against a spotless background.

Bring the icons back when you're done

After the recording, flip the same key back to its normal value and relaunch Finder. Every icon reappears in the exact position it held before.

# Restore the desktop icons
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
killall Finder

If you'd rather wipe the custom setting entirely instead of writing the opposite value, defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop followed by killall Finder does the same thing. Both routes are fully reversible and behave identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Where your files go while they're hidden

Hiding icons doesn't touch the files themselves. While CreateDesktop is off, Finder no longer manages the desktop layer at all, so double-clicking the wallpaper does nothing and you can't drop new files onto it. To reach anything on your desktop during a recording, open a Finder window and click Desktop in the sidebar, or use Go → Home and open the Desktop folder. Everything is right there, name for name.

This is the reason the Terminal route beats the old trick of dragging every file into a temporary folder: there's nothing to undo, no risk of forgetting where you stashed things, and no chance of a stray icon flashing into frame mid-take.

It stays hidden until you say otherwise

The setting is permanent, not a one-shot: CreateDesktop stays off across Finder relaunches and full restarts until you write the opposite value. So if you record often, leave it off between sessions — a clean desktop becomes your default and you skip the setup each time. There's a subtle bonus, too. Because Finder no longer manages the desktop while it's hidden, anything you save to the desktop mid-recording drops straight into the Desktop folder without ever drawing an icon, so even a stray download can't sneak into the frame. When you're done recording for good, flip it back and every file — including the ones added while it was off — appears at once.

Hide the other things that leak into a recording

A clean desktop is only half the job. Notification banners will still slide in over your video, so silence those too — see how to hide notifications while screen recording on Mac before your next take.