Screen saver broken in Monterey

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!

Here's one:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/12/07/apple-releases-macos-12-1-rc/

"This release also includes bug fixes for your Mac:

• Desktop and Screen Saver may appear blank after selecting photos from the Photos library"

It's a bug with Monterey. Report it to Apple via Feedback - macOS - Apple.  Those who were in the Monterey Beta program report it via the Feedback Assistant app.

The screen saver issue is addressed in the upcoming 12.1 update.

can you try doing the same method by using safe mode.

Follow https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Do inform me if it works :).

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.

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).

I had this issue a for a while, started in one of the previous macOS versions (Big Sur/Catalina) where I'd get a black/very dark screen with no photos showing.

Monterey 12.1 fixed that for me.

The issue I now have is that photos are only displayed in their original captured / imported form, and any crops or edits made to them are not shown in the screensaver. Anyone else experiencing this? (Already reported to Apple by the way)

Feel free to send Apple a bug report from the feedback page…

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Tell Apple about the problem via Feedback - macOS - Apple.

From what I have read Apple did nor include that capability with Monterey, and has not said if/when they were going to address putting it in.

flatfootfloozy wrote:

The photo display screensaver options do not, in fact, display any jpeg png or jpg.

Did you update to Monterey 12.1? Seems to be working for others.

Like your screen name.

The "fix" to 12.1 FIXED my screen saver. Yay! Happy again.

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...