Screen saver broken in Monterey

Apple posted today in the Feedback Assistant: Potential fix identified - For a future OS update

So hopefully there will be an update soon, I missed my screensaver pics of my late husband of 50 years!!!

I have the same problem. Activity Monitor shows hard drive literally going into overdrive at 600%+ CPU usage for Photos, iLife, and other Photos-related programs. iLife is especially unusual since it was an early predecessor to Photos and was discontinued many years ago. worked with Apple’s service group and got elevated to the engineering group which analyzed crash logs and basically concluded they need to find a fix and would address it in a future update. Not sure if Monterrey solved it or not. Need to check that……Not hopeful as previous recent updates did not solve this issue. Apple, please, from your biggest fans, get this fixed! Not being able to use my favorite photos as a screensaver for so long is, well, unbecoming my favorite computer company and puts me at a disadvantage with my Microsoft/PC friends!

The Classic and Ken Burns screensavers in Monterey default to "Colors". The picture collections in Big Sur don't exist. I reported this 2 weeks ago along with many other users but Apple has not released an update. Apple spent a lot of time hyping this new OS and offered many Beta versions How did this go unnoticed before the final release? So far Monterey has not lived up to the hype and is a huge disappointment. Apple, if you're reading this, please provide an update and explain how you missed this issue before you released the final version.

The trick is to get the ilifemediabrowser file folder in your library/application support directory and all will work. I have this file from long ago when I had the iLife suite (since deleted). For some reason when the iLife suite was deleted or updated for the newer OS it left this file in my directory. If I remove that file then photos screen save no longer works. Not sure how others can get this file installed.

The only iLife file needed should be in your Library/Application Support folder which is ilifemediabrowser for the photos screensaver to work. This should not be using any CPU. I have had this file for several years and no issues and I'm using Monterey 12.0.1.

Yes, it does. If you select (or create) a folder on your computer that has jpgs, you can have the screen saver use that folder to display your photos. It's only a problem if you use the Photos app folder. I wish Apple would fix that as well.

It seems that this issue is related to Intel hardware.

All those who complained are on intel macs.

I received a M1 MacBook and the problem is gone.

This sucks, just upgraded to Monterey and now stuck with a broken screen saver.

Reported!

Everyone needs to take a moment and do the same -- https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

Agreed, only partly fixed. Appears to only use a folder called PHOTOS. Can not select another.

This is what I was seeing before I upgraded to 12.1.

I wanted to edit this to add to it, but can't do that, so here we go. I did notice on the iMac that if I pick any other screen saver, Monterey, Hello etc. they work, it is just with photos that they do not work.

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.

I tried with both a new Album in Photo Library as well as the "~/Pictures" folder containing ~7700 photos and no luck. Sometimes when I click "Preview" I see a faint view of what they should look like behind a dark filter (and the small preview window renders as expected). Once I change the source, I can see heavy activity from iLife Slideshows background process then it fades out. Tried letting it run for several minutes, but just black screen (or clock if I choose that option). Same result when "Shuffle slide order" checked/unchecked. Worked fine and loved it under Big Sur but it broke after going to Monterey. Seems to be the same for all photo-based screensavers, so hopefully one fix will fix all of these. Are there some cache files/subdirectories we should delete to see if that fixes things? Tried reinstallation of Monterey and logout/login.

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.

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.