Clean Up your Desktop with these Helpful Programs

There was once a time, almost twenty years ago, when the desktop screen ushered in a new era of personal computing by making PC and Apple devices more visually appealing and user-friendly. But these days the desktop is in fast retreat. First, the growth of tablet and mobile devices has made it that many computing interactions take place without a desktop screen in sight. More recently, the unveiling of the Windows 8 platform suggests that this desktop-free model may soon become standard even on laptop platforms.


But it was the internet more than anything that pushed the desktop towards gradual oblivion. With the internet, people would immediately log onto their browser when turning on their computer, in the process creating a new “home” page on the web rather than on the hard drive. The growing dsl coverage map, the arrival of high speed connections such as DS3/Ocx, and the introduction of cloud computing only put people further towards the internet and farther from their desktop screens. The desktop, in the process, became home for downloads and temporary files, rarely-used icons and disorganized programs.

All this is to say that, for many of us, our desktop screens are incredibly cluttered and neglected these days. But just like an infrequently-used room of a house, we still probably want to clean up our desktop from time to time. Certainly, we can do this by going through and manually sorting each item. Yet there is a faster way, thanks to several programs that can do all the work for you.


Here are three of the best such programs:

• Zum. One of the best-reviewed cleaning programs out there, Zum is downloadable software that creates organized databases of almost everything – media, web browsers, files, music, and more. Moving major items from your desktop to the Zum database can automatically insure that they – and any subsequent additions – remain organized from that point forth.

• Deskcretary. Whenever your desktop looks too messy, running Deskcretery is basically no different from cleaning your screen manually – but it operates in a fraction of the time. Deskcretery creates an archived folder, placed onto the desktop, of all recently-added and rarely used items. What remains are those icons that you actually plan to use.

• Clean Desktop. An application for PC users, Clean Desktop weeds out all desktop items that have been added in the past month and presents you with a comprehensive list. You then can choosing to clean, delete, or restore these items.

These three programs are all great options for cleaning up your desktop and for keeping it clean. With them, you won’t have to worry about the mounting clutter that requires cleaning from time to time. Who knows you may even find yourself using your desktop more in the process.