How to Unhide Desktop Icons on macOS

One day I realized all of the desktop icons on my 2019 MacBook Pro were missing, but still visible in Finder. I thought maybe it was a bug in Big Sur 11.4 but I eventually found the solution.

There is a command to hide the icons on the desktop:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop FALSE; killall Finder
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop FALSE; killall Finder

I don’t remember running it, but by setting CreateDesktop to TRUE and restarting Finder, all my icons showed back up!

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop TRUE; killall Finder
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop TRUE; killall Finder

To make this easier in the future, I added a function to my shell:

# Pass TRUE or FALSE - toggles desktop icons on and off.
function toggle_desktop_icons()
{
  if [ -z "$1" ]
  then
    echo "You must pass 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' to this function!"
    echo "Try 'toggle_desktop_icons true' or 'toggle_desktop_icons false'"
    echo ""
    echo "Aborting!"
    return 0
  fi
 
  defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop $1; killall Finder
}
# Pass TRUE or FALSE - toggles desktop icons on and off.
function toggle_desktop_icons()
{
  if [ -z "$1" ]
  then
    echo "You must pass 'TRUE' or 'FALSE' to this function!"
    echo "Try 'toggle_desktop_icons true' or 'toggle_desktop_icons false'"
    echo ""
    echo "Aborting!"
    return 0
  fi

  defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop $1; killall Finder
}

References

• The Easiest Way To Hide Desktop Icons On Mac – Setapp