To clarify what I do to make a completely icon free desktop, right click the taskbar and check toolbar for the desktop.
It appears like two little arrows bottom right and you have taskbar autohide too. You can make additional slide-up things like this for commonly used folders
Also right click on desktop and under 'view' don't show icons.
Then all you have is your background picture or whatever.
It's more efficient because like now you are looking at TalkPhoto, you suddenly want to access something as an icon on your desktop?
You have to minimise at least one window whereas if it's on a slide-up you can just mouse down there and leave the browser window open
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