By default, the Mac desktop will display external drives and volumes, such as USB flash drives, external hard drives, and other storage devices. If you prefer not to have these external volumes appear on your desktop, you can modify a setting in MacOS to hide them.
Hiding external drives from the desktop provides a cleaner and more organized visual experience, while still allowing you to access those drives at any time through the Finder.
How to Hide External Disk Icons from Desktop on Mac
- Open the Finder and click the “Finder” menu at the top of the screen, then select “Settings” (or “Preferences” if you're using an older version of macOS)
- Make sure you are in the General tab
- Deselect the checkbox next to “External disks” to prevent external drives, USB sticks, and similar devices from appearing on the desktop
- Optionally, uncheck the box for CDs, DVDs, and iPods to also hide those types of devices when connected
- Close the Finder Settings window
The change takes effect immediately. Any currently connected external drives will no longer appear on the desktop.
You can still access all connected external storage devices through the Finder, where they will be visible in the sidebar or at the top level of any Finder window.
If you'd like to hide internal hard drives as well—including the main system drive labeled “Macintosh HD”—simply uncheck the box labeled 'Hard disks' in the same settings window. This will remove internal drives from the desktop view.
Please note that this setting remains consistent across all versions of macOS. However, starting with macOS Ventura 13, the Finder preferences are referred to as "Settings," while earlier versions use the term "Preferences."
If you've turned off this feature to reduce desktop clutter, you might also consider enabling Stacks on your desktop, which helps organize files into neat groups. For an even more minimal approach, you can choose to hide all desktop icons entirely by disabling desktop icon display, limiting file access exclusively through Finder.
The above is the detailed content of How to Hide External Drives from Mac Desktop. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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