Screen saver broken in Monterey

This bug seems to be tied to the image-based screen savers. The odd thing is that my third party screen saver "ArtSaver" is functioning and that is targeting the Pictures directory too, so it's not likely an issue with directory permissions.

Robert Ronning wrote:

Same problem here. Not working on my iMac... but works fine on my MacBook Air.

Are you saying it works on your MacBook Air which is running Monterey? I ask because it's not working on 4 different Macs running Monterey for me.

Also having the same issue on my Intel MBP ever since I upgraded to Monterey yesterday. Was working fine on Big Sur prior to that. I tested with both my iCloud album which I usually use as well as a local folder with a few photos in it but both failed. Black screen, flashes "no photos" then back to black on MBP screen and external monitors. Tried with all the screensavers that let you use photos. Definitely seems like a bug and glad I'm not the only one experiencing it. Reading some of the other comments I'm wondering if this is happening only with Intel Macs...

I submitted a bug report also and advise everyone else having the issue to do the same so it gets it on Apple's radar!

To clarify what is broken on all my M1 Macs using Monterey is the Screen Saver that uses Dynamic Desktop wallpapers like the Ken Burns or Classic.

Hope that helps clarify this a bit as it seems some think that none of the screen savers work, which is a different issue.

Same issue here, 2020 27-inch iMac i7

Tried changing the source folder, changing the type off screen saver, etc.. nothing helped.

The new Monterey screen saver (pretty colors) works just fine, but anything with photos just goes black.

Are you able to pick photos from an album in your Photos library for any screensaver? I just tied all of the different screensavers and those from Floating to Snapshots didn't work.

All those from Monterey to Electric Sheep did work even Album Artwork (which gets it's images from the Book app) . My favorite is the 3rd party screensaver Brooklyn.

Bottom line: for me none of the screensavers that require images from a Photos library worked.

What’s weird is that the photos are there — they’re just very very dim. Try it in a dark room and you’ll probably be able to pick out the image at something like <1% brightness. Driving me nuts trying to find some forgotten option and I think it’s just borked.

This is on both a recent Mac Pro and iMac Pro.

Yup, just installed Monterey - Now all my family photos ive been using as a screen saver wont show up in any of the photo options. For screen saver I have to use on of the built in canned ones. This has got to be a bug.

The screen saver will not play pictures from a folder or My Phot Stream etc on my 2017 15" Intel MacBook Pro but both work fine on my wife's 2021 13" M1 MacBook Pro...so seems to be an issue with Intel processors and Monterey as others have posted similar comments...is this a ploy to get us to upgrade? :-) Have also posted feedback to Apple...more the merrier!

I actually found that the "/Library/Screen Savers" empty. I tried to restore this by copying the directory "Default Collections" back from Time Machine to there. In the Screen Saver setting, I can now see the "Default collections" in "Source" but it is still not rendering the photos and showing a black screen...

I can’t imagine this is how they would do it. They’ve already blacklisted certain intel based macs that are not compatible with Monterey.. also, if by remote chance that was their strategy, they wouldn’t be doing it with screensavers. In addition to, one of the screensavers that works is Monterey which uses just as complicated graphics algorithms as the others. This must simply be how the build compiled these for Intel based macs imho

The problem only exists in those screensavers that look to the Photos library for images. So it's some kind of communication problem between the system (screensaver preference pane) and the Photos library.

All the other screensavers work fine on my iMac.

The photos are actually there, just so faint that unless you have a very bright monitor in a dark room, you cannot see it. I've verified this with every Mac experiencing the problem (iMac Pro, Mac Pro7,1).

Diacritical, this is not the case with me. Monitor up to its full brightness - nothing there. I have an LG Ultrafine 5K monitor hooked up to my MacBook Pro. Doesnt work on the MacBook monitor nor on the LG. If the photos were there, I would see them. Tried last night in full dark room - there isnt anything there.

Same here, but it only in my multi monitor setup! When using my MBP standalone the screensaver, Photo Wall, works fine. but with one or two monitors plugged in the screens stay black. Already posted my feedback to apple.