How to Auto-Arrange Desktop Icons?

There's no such feature to enable in Ubuntu. See this wishlist bug report about the feature request (it's from 2005...).

I wrote iconic to solve this problem by letting you define a grid size larger than the icons. Additionally it will:

• Allow you to move icons to any of three monitors
• Not suffer the "lost icon syndrome" that occurs when monitors of multiple resolutions are used
• Sort icons alphabetically, alphabetically with "Link to" prefix ignored, sort by modified date ascending or date descending
• Allow different grid size (columns x rows) depending on monitor, EG more on 4K monitor than 2K monitor
• Instant Test button for quick experimentation on column x row changes or reserved space changes for monitor left, top, right or bottom areas
• Test button will last for x seconds defined by you, clear all windows before test and restore them after test
• Bash script for easy modifications

You can get the script on github.

Here's the main screen:

Visit the github page for iconic to see all the other screens, explanations and a copy of the script.

Just a little modification for Ubuntu 17.04, you need to right click, select Keep Aligned and then Organise Desktop By Name.