arrange icons

Hey, TD.

Yes, my friend, I am reading your post. Just trying to help and making sure we're both on the same page.

And I don't mean to frustrate you, but I'm not sure that you are understanding that there are two ways to set the Desktop arrangement. One is temporary and holds during the current login. The other should hold even after a reboot. (I just tried this on a 2006 iMac running Mac OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard as I shot the pics above. Perhaps they are not as clear as they could be.)

There are two ways to set the Desktop to do what you are asking.

1) Right-click on the desktop and select Sort By Kind. This is a temporary measure for current login session. It does not command the Finder to retain this as a process beyond logging out or shutting down the computer.

2) To make the process stick, you MUST USE the View Options panel for the Desktop (not just the little popup mini-menu).

Right-click on the desktop and select Show View Options (or ⌘J). Click the last item at the bottom of the View Options panel that opens and select Arrange by: Kind.

This image of the Show View Options panel from High Sierra says "Sort by:" - the Snow Leopard version says "Arrange by:"

If your OS is working properly, then this should accomplish what you're after. If this does not work, then there is an underlying problem. My first thought is that your Finder preferences file is corrupt and needs to be reset.

You would delete the file com.apple.finder.plist

It's located in Macintosh > Users > yourusername > Library > Preferences.

I will NOTE - if you use Finder > View > Arrange By... or that right-click mini-menu after setting your preference in the View Options panel, then the panel selection will revert to Arrange by: None (!) and you're back where you started. An old bug perhaps? 🤷🏽‍♂️

Ugh! I'm sorry to hear that didn't work.

I wish I had more insight to offer to you here.

Also sorry to know you plan to leave the Mac platform.

In fairness, you are using vintage hardware and a quite old OS. In my experience things have improved vastly in the past decade since 10.6. was introduced. Do what you gotta do.

Cheers, my friend. d.i.

From the Finder > View > Show View Options:

... Arrange by > Kind

Right-click (or control+click) the desktop and make a "Sort By" selection.

Personally I find that sorting by Kind is very helpful for my purpose.