I want to straighten up the placement of SOME (not all!) icons on my Finder desktop. But now I can't find the menu command. Has this feature been removed in Yosemite?
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), 12-core Xeon E5 2.7 GHz, 32GB 1TB
Convoluted but select the files you want to "Clean up" - go to the help menu and type in "selection" - "cleanup by selection" will appear in the list below it - choose.
Why the **** Apple does this? Who knows. Steve we sure miss you! Do not TAKE AWAY features!
Convoluted but select the files you want to "Clean up" - go to the help menu and type in "selection" - "cleanup by selection" will appear in the list below it - choose.
Why the heck Apple does this? Who knows. Steve we sure miss you! Do not TAKE AWAY features!
My work around is:
Without using Clean Up (which moves every icon)
1. View>Options (at the bottom)
Sort by: Snap to grid
2. Manually move the icons one by one to preferred formation, i.e., column or row or whatever
3. Select icons and move group to chosen location and deselect
4.If desired change Sort by to none
I think there may be another (better?) method using Script Editor or Terminal
No, it would appear Apple has quietly removed this still-useful function. If it's not needed in iOS, I guess we Mac users don't need it either.
It makes me all the more careful to upgrade in the future. I don't care that the upgrade is free. I want to know what else Apple will arbitrarily take away from the OS that I am used to using, and will now have to do without.
COMMAND-J. The dialog allows you to set different Desktop sorting, but you can only chose one option at a time.
I don't get a dialog when I use cmd-J. I get the View Options panel, which makes no mention of Clean Up Selection or anything that I can see that resembles it.
Did you first click onto the Desktop? Clean Up as a specific option is located under the View menu.
Thank you both for your replies.
I'm not sure I understand. One of you went to some trouble posting a screencap of the View menu for me, as though I simply could not find where the Clean Up command was.
That was not my question.
Let me clarify. I want to Clean Up Selection—this is a standard variation of the Clean Up command in Finder going back over twenty years. I do not want to clean up or sort my entire desktop... I want to clean up a selection of icons, and leave the rest of them where they lay.
I know where the Clean Up menu item is. If the Clean Up menu item did what I wanted, I would not be here asking the question. The Clean Up command wants to organize my entire desktop. I'm not interested in this. I just want to straighten out a subset of icons.
Surely I cannot be the only Mac user here who remembers this command or has need for it today in Yosemite.
I have tried to hold down command, option, shift, control, and combinations of these to make the Clean Up Selection command appear, but nothing I've tried so far seems to do it. In the past, this is how the MacOS would allow for obscure (?) yet still useful functionality to be accessible. (I fail to see what is obscure about this command, though. It has been a mainstay of the Finder since I can remember.)
Am I to assume that Apple has removed this functionality? Once again disposing of something useful in MacOS because there is no corresponding command in iOS?
Based on the lack of responses here, I'm forced to assume that Apple has removed this functionality from the Mac OS. Why, is anyone's guess, but I have my theory. Guess I'll have to put up with an uneven stack of volume icons from here on out.
Did you ever figure anything out with this? I miss using the Clean Up Selection as well.
Wow, so they buried it, but it's still in there. I would never have thought to do that. Thank you very much!
How do I Clean Up Selection on the Finder desktop?
