Show Desktop Icons in Gnome 3 (Fedora 18)

By default there are no visible icons on Gnome 3 desktop. You can make icons be visible through either of the following way.


CLI Method
Open a terminal window and execute the following command.
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true
Note that you don't need to be root to apply the command.

GUI Method
You need Gnome Tweak Tool to activate desktop icons using graphical method. To install Gnome Tweak Tool type the following command as root.
# yum -y install gnome-tweak-tool

You can also use graphical tool like Software in Fedora to install this versatile utility.

You can open it by typing gnome-tweak-tool command from terminal window

or you can press Alt+F2 and type the command there.

Or you can find this tool under Accessories and open it from there.

Now select Desktop from lest and turn the switch on that says 'Have file manager handle the Desktop'. It will instantly show your desktop icons.

There are also some other options here that controls whether the Home, Network Servers, Trash & Mounted Volumes icons will be visible on the desktop. You can turn the respective switches on or off according to your requirement.

Note that if you want your Gnome 3 desktop in previous state just turn the file manager switch off from this window or you can use the following command -

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false

You need to reboot your system for this to take effect.

Source

Fedora Project