Screen saver broken in Monterey

I spoke with apple about this problem. They said they were working on a fix. When that will come is a big question. Hard to believe Apple is so inept to put out an operating system losing a basic function.

I could not agree more! Having been in the software business i cant imagine how little

rational and continuity testing was done on this whole release.

i have 6 apple machines and will never likely upgrade 5 of them based on this miserable outcome. This would be basic stuff across machine compatability!

Moneterey 12.1 is now giving me a screensaver that changes the pictures every few seconds, using a folder in Photos. That's a plus. But the photos are still showing up in unedited form. I have lots of pictures that I have edited - I am still getting them in the screensaver in their original, unedited, form (as with Monterey thus far, and also with the last version of Big Sur. In all the screwups of the screensaver that I have seen through numerous system updates over 25 years, this is a new one. Reported. But all the reports on here about this issue describe a whole bunch of different issues, not just one or two. WTF is going on over there?

I just updated to 12.1 and still am unable to run my Photos screensaver without the iLife and other tasks using up hundreds of percents of my CPU and crashing my computer. As before, I had to rush to force quit those tasks in Activity Monitor to avoid the computer seizing up and crashing before I could do it. Ugh!

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.

flatfootfloozy wrote:

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

That is weird. Nearly all of the image files in the folder I have selected for my screensaver are PNG files and it's working as expected. I am using the Classic module.

Edit to add: I am using a folder of PNG and JPG/JPEG image files on my hard drive, not a folder from Photos. In case that makes a difference.

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.

Only partly fixed. If you use a folder of pictures in Photos for your screensaver, and if you have edited any of your photos, then the screensaver shows the unedited version of the picture. In this respect we are back to where we were with the final version of Big Sur. So we are still at least one fix away from properly fixed.

Not for me. I'm on 12.1 on a MBP 16 Max and no joy with screen saver. Previews alright, then goes back to a horrendous bright green when the saver actually kicks in. Update: After reading an earlier suggestion to rename the folder to Photos, it works. Haha. Great. Too bad we can't use whatever name we want, but at least that is a useful workaround. To clarify, I had a folder ~/Library/Screen Savers/Black and had to rename it to ~/Library/Screen Savers/Photos for it to work. It contains a black jpg only.

Hm. My screensaver image file folder is called LOL and it works just fine. However, the folder is not in the ~/Library/Screen Savers folder. It's on a non-standard location (disk partition on internal drive).

So weird.

Sorry, my response included details related to another Monterey problem (with Logic, part of another forum thread). With regard to the screen saver problem, I am still getting intermittent fluorescent green screens instead of my folder containing a black jpg. I'm on 12.1 with MBP 16" M1 Max.

I've just gotten Catalina on a new Mac. The screensaver would work when I directed it to a picture file through Finder. But to save space I have migrated all my photos via a photos library onto an external hard drive. I can get there with the screen saver but I can't choose that library. Would like this solution to continue to save space on the Mac HDD.

In Photos, with that library open, go to Photos->Preferences and click the button “Use as System Photo Library”. Then instead of navigating to the folder, choose the library or specific album within it.

I was able to do that, but no photos show when I preview. Could it have something to do with cloud settings? When I selected to set the external disk library as the system library I thought it warned me about photos on the cloud. I don’t want to store photos on the cloud so I disabled that setting. I feel like I’m closer! BTW, I do have the newest update if that matters.

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)