3 Ways To Lock Desktop Icons In Place

Windows does not come with a feature that locks the desktop icons in place. You can, however, turn off “Auto-Arrange” option so that Windows doesn’t reorganize your desktop icons automatically each time you add files to the desktop. [1] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

If you place a checkmark next to “Auto arrange icons,” Windows will manage the order of your icons for you as you install new programs and save files to the desktop. This could cause your desktop icon order to shift when you don’t expect it to.

If you want Windows to organize your icons alphabetically by name, date modified, size, or type, you can easily sort your icons. Just right-click the desktop, select Sort by, and choose a pattern.

Press Windows key + E on the keyboard to open File Explorer. Double-click the Downloads folder. Right-click DeskLock. zip and choose Extract All… Choose a location to store the new DeskLock files. You can keep the default location in your Downloads folder if you’d like. Click Extract. Double-click the DeskLock folder to open it.

If your icons keep switching back to their previous positions, right-click the desktop, select View, and remove the checkmark from “Auto arrange icons. "

If you don’t see this icon in the system tray, click the up-arrow (^) left of the clock and volume icons to see those which are hiding. If you restart your computer, you’ll need to restart DeskLock, as it won’t start up immediately.

DeskLock should be enabled by default. If it’s disabled you’ll see a green icon with an “S” inside instead of the computer screen with padlock. If that’s what you see, right-click that instead.

There is no way to completely lock your icons in one position on a Mac—you’ll always be able to click and drag your icons to another position. However, if you choose to sort your icons in a particular order, they’ll remain in that order unless you change your sorting preferences.

To keep your icons arranged neatly into a grid, select Snap to Grid under “None” at the top of the menu. If you’d rather your Mac sort your icons in a particular order and keep them in that order indefinitely, you can choose another sorting method, such as Name (which keeps your icons in alphabetical order) or Date added (which will always add newest icons to the last position on the desktop). Keep in mind that if you add new icons to the desktop, macOS will move them into the sorting order automatically.