Hides all desktop icons, or shows them if they're all hidden already.

toggledesktopicons

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Hides all unhidden tesktop icons, or if they are all hidden already,
# unhides all (excluding dot prefixed).
# (this way allows adding to desktop even if all is hidden)
# NOTE: your DE/file manager has to support .hidden files (different from just supporting hiding files prepended with '.')
# afaik its supported with the major distros/file managers (gnome, plasma, xfce)

DESKTOP_DIR=~/Desktop
HIDDEN_FILE="$DESKTOP_DIR/.hidden"
HELP_MSG="Hides all desktop icons, or shows them if they're all hidden already."

# Check for --help or -h argument
if [[ "$1" == "--help" || "$1" == "-h" ]]; then
    echo "$HELP_MSG"
    exit 0
fi

# Get whats on the desktop
desktop_contents=$(ls -1 "$DESKTOP_DIR")

# Check if the file exists and its contents match the current desktop_contents
[ -f "$HIDDEN_FILE" ] && echo "$desktop_contents" | diff -q - "$HIDDEN_FILE" > /dev/null
all_hidden_already=$?

# Remove the .hidden file if it exists
# this is needed regardless of state because we need to change
# the state of existence of the file in order to trigger it to update the ui
rm "$HIDDEN_FILE"

# Show/Hide all desktop files/folders
if [ "$all_hidden_already" -eq 0 ]; then
    # already deleted .hidden file above so do nothing
    echo "Unhiding all desktop icons."
else
    # save the current desktop contents to the .hidden file to hide all file/folders
    echo "$desktop_contents" > "$HIDDEN_FILE"
    echo "Hiding all desktop icons."
fi