How to Auto-Arrange Desktop Icons?

How do I enable auto-arrange (not just "auto-align") for desktop icons, like in Windows?


There's no such feature to enable in Ubuntu. See this wishlist bug report about the feature request (it's from 2005...).


I wrote iconic to solve this problem by letting you define a grid size larger than the icons. Additionally it will:

  • Allow you to move icons to any of three monitors
  • Not suffer the "lost icon syndrome" that occurs when monitors of multiple resolutions are used
  • Sort icons alphabetically, alphabetically with "Link to" prefix ignored, sort by modified date ascending or date descending
  • Allow different grid size (columns x rows) depending on monitor, EG more on 4K monitor than 2K monitor
  • Instant Test button for quick experimentation on column x row changes or reserved space changes for monitor left, top, right or bottom areas
  • Test button will last for x seconds defined by you, clear all windows before test and restore them after test
  • Bash script for easy modifications

You can get the script on github.

Here's the main screen:

iconic main menu.png

Visit the github page for iconic to see all the other screens, explanations and a copy of the script.


Just a little modification for Ubuntu 17.04, you need to right click, select Keep Aligned and then Organise Desktop By Name.


Right-click on Desktop and click on Clean up by name