Mac Performance Tip – Turn off Desktop Icon Previews
Desktop Icon Previews can squeeze some computing juice out of your Mac.
Macs are pretty good at utilizing the system resources to give a better performance than their Windows counterparts. But if you squeeze your Mac to the maximum extend possible then you can only expect a sluggish performance. When you run into a scenario where every bit of your Mac’s computing power counts then you need to take into account every small little tweak which can yield your Mac some computing power.
Once such tiny tweak that can yield some computing power is to turn off icon previews. This would be particularly helpful if you use your Mac desktop a lot to store files for review. The more the cluttered your Mac desktop is the better this tweak will yield results. Turning off icon preview is lot simpler than you thought.
Get to your Mac desktop and right-click and choose “Show View Options” from the context menu (Command-J, if you are a keyboard maestro!).
Uncheck the “Show icon preview” option which will essentially turn off icon previews on any icons on your desktop. Your Mac don’t have to draw a preview image of those icons anymore which would yield some processing power to your Mac.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Hello, I have been trying to turn off the icon preview and make it a default but can't. I always have to turn it off every morning because I can't see an option for a default button or an option to change the background as you showed in the your article. I'm running a15 inch MBP, with now leopard. Thanks
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:52 am
George – if I understand it correct your Mac resets the icon preview setting everytime you restart the machine, correct? If that's true then try this. There is a "Use as Defaults" button at the bottom of the "Turn off desktop icon preview" dialog. Make sure the "Show icon preview" option is unchecked and hit the "Save as Defaults" button. From now on your Mac should retain the new settings. Please let us know if it helped. Thanks.