Apple's new Mac software cleaned up years of messy files that accumulated on my desktop in less than a second

Dave Smith/Business Insider

• Apple on Monday released MacOS Mojave, its latest free software update for Mac computers.
• One of the best features introduced in MacOS Mojave is called Stacks, which automatically organizes all of your files into neat piles, grouped in the way you like.
• Stacks cleaned up years of messy files in less than a second, with a click of a button.

The first then I did when I downloaded MacOS Mojave, the free new software update for Mac computers that went live on Monday, was use a new feature called Stacks.

Stacks takes the brainwork out of a repetitive and annoying task - keeping your files organized - by doing the heavy lifting on your behalf.  With a click of a button, MacOS Mojave can clean up your entire desktop, and organize all of your errant files into neat little stacks.

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It's dead simple to use. You just go to your Finder, click View, and then click Use Stacks.

Here it is in action:

You can even organize your Stacks the way you want: based on file type, or when you last added it, or tags you create yourself.

Stacks was able to do in just seconds what I haven't been able to do in years of owning Mac computers. I love organization, but it's hard to keep all of my desktop files tidy since I'm continually adding to the pile every single day - I take a lot of screengrabs as part of my job, and when I'm collecting dozens of photos from videos and live events, the last thing I'm thinking is which folder I'm going to put them in later. Even when I do take time to organize my desktop, it just gets messy again a few days later.

Stacks is a simple and elegant solution to a problem that's more annoying than you'd think, and it's a great reason, by itself, to download MacOS Mojave.