Clean Windows desktop forever

Did you ever saw Windows desktop surface full with icons, temporary files? Looks quite messy, didn`t? And I find me confused when I need to find something there.

I created one solution I will share. From now I use it for more than 5 years.

Introduction

On my Windows desktop, I have directory "DailyNotes" which contains two subdirectories: Today and Past.

C:.
└───DailyNotes
    ├───Past
    │   ├───2002.01.12
    │   └───2020.01.13
    └───Today

Directory structure

Today - is for current day purposes.
Past - goes all past content structured by date.

The process is very simple. I have created a task in Task Scheduler which triggers daily at 22:00. Task executes small PowerShell script which copies all files from Today directory to Past subdirectory with name yyyy.MM.dd (format is easy to change in PowerShell script).

Create Powershell script

Script location is not very important, only remember the path.

# Assign Desktop directory path
$DesktopPath = [Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop")
# Assign current date folder name using a specified format
$TodayFolderName = $(get-date -f yyyy.MM.dd)
$NotesDirectory = "DailyNotes"

# When the directory did not exist create all structure you need
if(!(Test-Path -Path $DesktopPath\$NotesDirectory )){
	cd $DesktopPath
    mkdir $NotesDirectory
    mkdir $NotesDirectory\Today
    mkdir $NotesDirectory\Past
}

# Switch to Past directory and create directory with current date in name
cd $DesktopPath\DailyNotes\Past\
mkdir $TodayFolderName
cd ..

# Move all files contains in Today directory to the new subdirectory
# Clear Today directory
Move-Item .\Today\* .\Past\$TodayFolderName\
cd .\Today
del *

DailyNotes.ps1

Create Scheduled Task

First open Task Scheduler utility.

Choose in Actions panel Create Task... located in Task Scheduler Library section. And fill all fields.

The time when the task should be triggered you choose as you like.

Program/Script: %SystemRoot%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
Add arguments: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File C:\...\Scripts\DailyNotes.ps1 here goes full path you placed your script