Linux Mint: How to Configure Desktop Icons
Your desktop is the first thing you see when you log on to your computer. Desktop icons can be an important part of easy and quick access to the files you want. Linux Mint comes with a fairly minimalistic desktop by default. Many users may assume that it only has two icons, “Computer” and “Home”; however, it is not quite. If you connect any external or removable drives to our Linux Mint computer and mount them, the mounted drive will also appear as an icon on the desktop.
How to arrange Dekstop icon – Linux Mint
To configure desktop icons in Linux Mint, press the Super key. Then type “Desktop”. Before you press enter or click on an item, make sure the option you selected has a blue icon and says “Manage desktop icons” at the bottom. The second option with the green icon will open your “Desktop” directory.
Tip : The “Super” key is the name many Linux distributions use to refer to the Windows key or the Apple “Command” key, avoiding any risk of trademark issues.
Press the Super key, type “Desktop” and select the item with the blue icon and label “Manage desktop icons”.
Desktop icon settings
The first setting you can manage is “Desktop Layout”. The drop-down menu allows you to choose:
- No desktop icons
- Show desktop icons only on the primary monitor.
- Show desktop icons on every monitor except the primary one.
- Show desktop icons on all monitors.
Another set of options, “Desktop Icons”, lets you choose which icons to display on your desktop. “Computer” offers shortcuts to the various drives on your computer. “Home” will add a shortcut to your home directory. “Trash” provides a shortcut to the trash. “Mounted Drives” displays shortcuts to all mounted drives, such as USB sticks, external hard drives, and optical storage media. “Network” allows a shortcut to all configured network storage drives.
The final setting “Show icons from missing monitors” is used to indicate whether you want the icons that should be on the monitor that is not currently connected to be automatically moved to the currently connected monitors. This option is only useful for computers that use multiple monitors and can be ignored for pure single monitor systems.
