How can I hide specific drive icon on iMac desktop?

I do not know of any way to hide a specific drive icon on the Desktop.

But you could do this ...

• Create an alias for each of the drives you *DO* want to appear on your desktop. Place the aliases on your desktop. The icons will look like folder icons but they point to the actual drive(s).
• In Finder > Preferences > General > Show these items on the desktop, turn off Hard disks & External disks.

ps. There actually is a way to hide a specific drive but the problem is that it hides the drive everywhere, not just from the Desktop. I consider it inadvisable for the vast majority of users.

My solution does not involve or affect the drive icon on the Desktop.

I'm saying you should use the shortcuts listed on the Finder's Sidebar (left side of Finder by default) and pull off any particular items you don't want to see on the Finder's Sidebar. Items on the Finder's Sidebar should also be available in any Open/Save dialog boxes for ease of access. If no external volumes appear on the Finder's Sidebar, then you will need to first modify the Finder's Sidebar settings to display "external drives" which will place all mounted external volumes onto the Finder's Sidebar. You should be able to Right-Click or Control-Click on an item and select "Remove from sidebar". If you want to put it back, you may need to go back & recheck the Finder's Sidebar Settings again for "external drives". I don't know if there is any other way to restore a particular volume to the sidebar once it has been removed.

You can create a new macOS user account where you can experiment with these settings to see how they work before trying to apply anything to the main user account. As long as an admin password is not required, then it should only affect the current user account.

It struck me that all of us should have asked you two questions much earlier, so here goes:

• What is the reason you want to hide one specific drive from the Desktop?
• How experienced are you with managing Macs, esp. if there are suggestions that require use of Terminal and some complexity around commands?

Maybe instead of using the Desktop you use the Finder's Sidebar instead. I believe you can drag specific drives off the Sidebar and they won't reappear until you reset the Finder's Sidebar settings by rechecking showing external drives.....I think if you remove a drive from the Sidebar that check box shows a hyphen " - " instead of a check mark.

Asta123 wrote:

Martin, what is the way to hide a drive that you mention in your PS. And why do you consider it inadvisable. Are you familiar with the method mention by HWTech below? Thanks.

It involves modifying the hidden flag for a drive, volume, folder or file. I'm not going to go into any specifics because it's too easy to mess up your system by hiding things that way. I strongly advise against doing it.

There are other, safer ways to achieve what you want to do ... such as the Alias method I suggested earlier.

Removing a drive from the Finder Sidebar as @HWTech suggested is also safe but it only removes the item from the Sidebar, it doesn't remove a drive icon from your Desktop.

The aviegas reply to this MacRumors Hide one specific external drive on Desktop post would be the approach I would take.

Then I would disable the Finder -> Settings so it no longer shows any drives on the Desktop.

And if you want to access mounted drives, look on the Finder Side-Bar.