This idea is a software program that takes as an input a desired background picture and a full "desktop" folder, and then approximates that picture by arranging the desktop icons. There are existing programs which make a picture as a mosaic of other pictures, so this shouldn't be too difficult to do in theory.

I prefer to use search to organize my documents on my Windows computer. In other words, I save pretty much everything to "desktop" with a descriptive name, then, when my desktop folder becomes so large that it takes more than a second to sort by date, I copy everything more than 2 months old into an "old desktop -date-" folder. This works OK but tends to hide the desktop background picture since the entirety of screen space is covered in a mish-mash of icons and file names. Which is what led to this idea.

Not sure if this goes in the desktop:background or desktop:icons category.
-- sninctown, Mar 13 2020

[+]
-- 21 Quest, Mar 13 2020


Is there a icon set that's little toast shapes with varying shades?
-- wjt, Mar 13 2020



random, halfbakery