Hide Desktop Items on Mac

I assumed hiding desktop items on my Mac (Snow Leopard) would be as simple as right clicking on the desktop and selecting a 'hide icons' option. Unfortunately, this isn't the case but there is another quick way of hiding icons on the mac without downloading any other tools.

Simply fire up the terminal and type in:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

Then restart Finder by typing in:

killall Finder 

Your desktop will still contain all the files that were there, but you now have a nice, clean background.
If you want to re-enable the icons, simply enter the same command but set the 'bool' switch to 'true'

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

Then restart Finder again

killall Finder

Thanks to OSXDaily for the tip