Ben Shirt-Ediss

In June 2025, I released InfiniDesk, an macOS menu bar app that helps organise your Mac desktop by giving you multiple independent desktops.

Great for multi-taskers, InfiniDesk lets you create and switch between multiple project-specific "Desktop Views". Each "Desktop View" displays a different set of files/folders/shortcuts on your desktop, letting you really focus on your current project or task.

You can create a desktop for work files, a desktop for admin files, a desktop for a new creative project under construction, an empty desktop for when sharing your screen... the possibilities are endless!

(👉 A common question I get: how is it different to Mission Control on the Mac? Well, Mission Control lets you choose the window group displayed on your desktop, whereas InfiniDesk lets you choose the files displayed on your desktop. Apple never implemented this really useful feature.)

This post is the story of how the InfiniDesk app came about.

7 Years in the Oven on Low Heat

The initial idea came back in 2018, when I was working as a researcher in academia.

I loved (and still love!) using my desktop to store my current files and folders. To me, it is so intuitive having my "work in progress" in front of me and at my fingertips, just like on a real physical desktop. Plus, my brain seems to naturally remember the 2D layout of information on the desktop.

However, the issue came when I began working across multiple distinct projects, each with their own assets. The desktop was a mess, of course. What I really wanted was a way to switch the desktop view to just show the folders/files/shortcuts of the project I was working on that day, and nothing else, so I could focus exclusively on that.

Yes, of course, there are ways around this on Mac. You might say, why not simply make folders for different projects, and put shortcuts to these folders on the desktop? However, this requires you to open "middle-man" Finder windows (more window clutter) before getting to your files. And, Finder never seems to open at the correct size, position, or in the correct display mode anyway (even if you set it to display a folder as "Icons", it often forgets and defaults back to "List").

I just wanted to stick with storing my current project files on the desktop, and switch the desktop contents. Simple and uncomplicated. After all, the desktop always displays icons in the same 2D arrangement, it always fills the whole screen area, and opening a file from the desktop does not involve pesky Finder windows at all.

It was actually totally baffled why no option existed on Mac to switch the desktop contents. After all, the desktop is the visual entry point to the rest of the file system. Existing solutions like Mission Control and Stage Manager were only concerned with window management - a different thing.

So, I built InfiniDesk... well, the first version in 2018 was actually called Clarity.

The First Incarnation as Clarity

I coded the core logic of Clarity in an intense John Carmack-style weekend programming session when my family was away.

Clarity was by any standards a technical app; it used the terminal to switch the desktop contents, and also required quite an involved setup. But, it worked really well for me personally and the capability for multiple desktops really boosted my Mac productivity.

After a short time, I released Clarity as open-source. Even though the tool was only discoverable via an obscure link on Ask Different (the Stack Overflow site for Apple), people were nevertheless finding it and using it. Over the years 2018-2024 I got many emails saying the concept was great, but users were having problems using the Terminal to install and access the app. Also, Clarity physically moved files in and out of the Desktop folder which carried its own safety risks.

This drip feed of external validation over the years boosted my confidence that Clarity might fly if built into a full friendly Mac app. When I finished my academic research career, I decided to take a risk and set aside some deep time (unpaid) to try just that.

The Rebuild From Zero

In January 2025, I started re-building Clarity from the ground up as a Mac menubar app. I renamed it to InfiniDesk for a more unique and non-trademarked name.

To be honest, at first I was not even sure that the transformation from hobby-terminal-app to robust-production-app would be possible. But as it turned out, the main hurdles were solvable, and the considerable gap between the two could be closed.

The re-make ended up taking me 5 months solo, including the building the app for Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, code-signing/notarizing/packaging, graphics, testing, building the website front and back-ends and integrating Paddle payments.

I wrote all of the logic for the app and website manually, with AI help only for small well-defined coding tasks that I would also manually check (no "vibe coding"). I did the main development work on macOS Big Sur (from 2020) on my older workhorse Mac Mini, to be sure the app would work well with older Mac operating systems and with older Intel processors.

The file safety angle also made me pivot to a totally new mechanism of action whereby the app only changed the the visibility of desktop items: it now never renamed or moved files outside of the Desktop folder. This completely solved the safety aspect, and also solved a raft of other problems in the same swoop, like with apps that files open from hidden desktops. I also managed to solve some thorny issues whereby hidden desktop files could sometimes be unhidden by certain apps.

Working with a beta tester in the US (an early user of Clarity) proved to be extremely useful at the later stages, as some major issues were highlighted that I was not aware of. This collaboration really helped me to polish InfiniDesk to be ready for production.

I released the v1.0 of InfiniDesk on June 24 on macmenubar.com. On that same day, iFun.de picked it up and wrote a positive review (in German). Three days later, LifeHacker wrote up a nice review in English. In the coming week, ScreenCastsOnline emailed me to say they were making a video about the app for their members. I also launched the app on Product Hunt, Hacker News etc.

The Future

Now I am learning about the (very different) world of marketing, and my ongoing effort is to try to make the app reach more people who could find it useful.

My immediate future roadmap for InfiniDesk is to integrate it with Mission Control, such that you can "pin" a Desktop View to a Mission Control "Space". This will be a killer feature! Also, I plan to add support for more languages inside the app (🇩🇪 German, 🇫🇷 French, 🇪🇸 Spanish and 🇷🇴 Romanian). AppleScript support is another big one on the list - this will allow other apps to tell InfiniDesk "change the desktop contents" and will also permit hot key combinations to switch the desktop contents immediately. I want the app to be installable via Homebrew as well... so plenty to be getting on with!

Due to its simplicity and reliance only on core macOS features, I hope the app will be supported far into future versions of macOS. I hope it will become a go-to productivity app helping people to organize their Mac desktop files.

It's been a great journey so far building the app, learning new skills, accessing brand new communities, rousing old friends and meeting new people. Thanks for reading!

Sites to Feature InfiniDesk in the First Month

• Life Hacker (this review was also reproduced on Yahoo and MSN and had some -- likely AI -- translations into Spanish and French)
• ScreenCastsOnline (released as a Youtube Video also)
• iFun.de (in German)
• iTopNews.de (in German)
• TheSweetBits
• All-in-One Person (also in Russian)
• macmenubar.com
• Product Hunt Launch (scraped by HuntScreens and several other sites)

Testimonials That Make the Grind Worth It!

"Whilst scouting through some recent Indie app releases, Lee happened upon a wonderful utility for macOS that helps streamline your Desktop items. If you are the kind of user who loves having a desktop full of files and folders, yet finds it gets overloaded, InfiniDesk is for you, as you can create individual virtual desktops that house subsets of these items." ScreenCastsOnline

"We love thoughtful indie Mac apps — and InfiniDesk is one of the sweetest we've seen. It helps you turn your cluttered Mac desktop into task-based workspaces — and it just works." @thesweetbitscom