How To Make Desktop Icons Snap In Grid Like In Windows?

**LonelyAspie** · February 1st, 2011

I can't seem to find a way to do that.

**rg4w** · February 1st, 2011

Right-click on the desktop and choose "Keep Aligned".

**LonelyAspie** · February 2nd, 2011

I have that enabled, but you see, they don' snap in place like when you move them, I like them all to be a certain space apart from each other, like in Windows.

**rg4w** · February 2nd, 2011

Ah, I see. As a relative newbie, I've reached the limits of my knowledge on this.

I poked around in gconf-editor to see if I could find some settings to help you, but came up empty on anything that seemed useful.

Hopefully one of the more experienced folks will drop in here with the solution, or at least a means to better diagnose why that option isn't working for you. I'll be watching this thread with interest.

**Dr_Frost** · May 14th, 2011

I would like a solution on this to, the way i do it is make a "slab" background of slabs/boxes where i can then place the icons in, but to do this right i have to have "keep aligned" off, or else the icons horizontally are just weird, it's like the desktop is concave here.....

**fatality_uk** · May 22nd, 2011

It's been a "bug" for more years than I care to mention. It gets raised every so often and always ends up in a cul-de-sac and then eventually gets closed as orphan.

**Dr_Frost** · May 22nd, 2011

The only way i have achieved a "grid" function is with a grid wallpaper, this was made to fit my labtop that has a res of 1440x900, you can try it and see if it works, can be used temporary to align icons, the weird thing about the icon grid is that it does not start from top corner (0, 0) it actually start from (9, 9)

**ChrisWells** · May 22nd, 2011

There is no way afaik, I googled it for ages. Keep aligned is good enough, but I like my icons at the bottom left of the screen- no way to do that without them being oddly aligned. I think a grid should be implemented for gnome / any DE I doubt anyone would actually complain about it, should be standard.

**fatality_uk** · June 8th, 2011

I have switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu in the last week and one of the reasons is this! Unity was the main factor, but still.

**LonelyAspie** · July 8th, 2011

No solution for this yet? Isn't really that important, just makes it a bit easier, especially when copying a few things to the desktop, so the won't copy on top of each other. I do my best to drag them in grid like places.