Apple Intelligence now features Image Playground, Genmoji, Writing Tools enhancements, seamless support for ChatGPT, and visual intelligence.
Apple Intelligence has also begun language expansion with localized English support for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Learn more >
Apple Intelligence has also begun language expansion with localized English support for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Learn more >
You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
Downloaded full release of Sonoma this morning. Changing the wall paper in Settings does not work. Stuck with the Sonoma Vineyard scene it booted with after installing. Any ideas?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini, macOS 14.0
Wow. I created this thread almost a year ago and gave up trying to make it work - since the Apple wall papers and screen savers are nice anyway. But today I thought ... it must have been fixed by now. But NO. Apple still has the option to shuffle a Photos Album as wallpaper, and STILL it does not work. I generate bug reports on this and I assume others did too. Failure to address a bug like this for so long shows a pathetic lack of attention to customer issues and to detail.
Wow. I created this thread almost a year ago and gave up trying to make it work - since the Apple wall papers and screen savers are nice anyway. But today I thought ... it must have been fixed by now. But NO. Apple still has the option to shuffle a Photos Album as wallpaper, and STILL it does not work. I generate bug reports on this and I assume others did too. Failure to address a bug like this for so long shows a pathetic lack of attention to customer issues and to detail.
I don't think you fully understand the topic. My first post was about Sonoma not changing wallpaper at all. But as you have found, Sonoma does display the Apple wallpapers correctly once they have been downloaded and that seems to be what you are responding to. However, Sonoma will NOT shuffle an album of your own images from Photos as wallpaper. Have a look at my post from 26 September with an image attached. To make it clearer I have attached a screen shot from Settings. You'll see that Wallpaper is set to shuffle an album from my Photos library called Funghi. And on the desktop behind it you can see the Sonoma Vineyard wall paper. Try it.
If you want your posts to be treated with respect, treat others with respect. Describing others' legitimate posts as "griping" will not earn you a positive reaction in these discussions.
That was my exact thought. Is Apple so in love with their new photos that they disallow me to use my own on my screensaver?
The worst part for me is that I had *just* set it up how I liked with loved ones photos who recently passed. Every time I saw them appear on my screensaver it gave warmth to my heart.
The reason I've loved Apple is because it's been intuitive, but this is the pits. I hope they fix it soon.
I've just updated to Sonoma 14.1. After a delay whilst it seems to re-index photos, I still have the same problem of not cycling one of my albums. The workaround I used before still seems to be the only solution.
I have over 4000 photos so I only click about 100. They cycle as it should.
Strangely, screen saver works properly.
A workaround. Go to settings/wallpaper/your chosen Photos Album. Eventually (can take a while) your photo albums will list and there will be a thumbnail of each photo in the album. The first thumbnail is the non working 'cycle the album' activator. Any photo you click on becomes the wallpaper. Now keep clicking successively on as many as you want. Now go back to that first activator thumbnail and click on it. All photos you clicked will now cycle. I have 4100 photos in my 'wallpaper' album, but only have about 200 cycling. Good luck.
PS How many Sonoma updates do we have to wait for before Apple addresses this BIG FAIL. I think with 14.2 we have had 4.
Again: this is NOT about the new "Wallpapers".
It's about the old ones not working because Apple just had their new ones in mind and forgot about the old ones - like folders in Photos or albums - to keep them working.
Really amazing how few people actually read what is written here and just write about their problems even if it's not the topic here.
Since Sonoma update on my MacBook Air M1, i cannot get my entire photo library(more than 15000 photos) for wallpaper. I can put one photo but when i change to all photos i get sonoma horizon. Nothing changed after 14.1 update. I have made a separate thread but i can see that issues here are similar. I made a report today and i hope for a future solution.
Thanks Mark, but different issue from the one I raised. The new Apple wallpapers seem to be stills from the new screen savers and the 4k screensaver .MOV files are up to 900MB. So they take a while. The issue is that Sonoma won't use a Photos album of your own photos as a screensaver.
I'm happy for you but do NOT regard this as a solution. They need to fix the bug. They can't expect millions of people to uninstall an update (however one does that!) and reinstall. Nor do I want to spend 2 hours on the phone with them for any reason. This is absurd. Hopefully the bug will be fixed soon.
SIMPLE FIX:
No need to reboot. No need to gripe about what doesn't work. Just logout and back in again. It's either a bug or Sonoma hasn't finished doing it's under-the-hood housekeeping. Either way, it will smooth out and go away.
Apple monitors these forums. That's what the "Me Too" button is for. Replying with your own version of the same problem does nothing but pollute the message boards, especially if you're not providing an actual solution/workaround that might help others.
Perhaps you were replying to Foxfifth, but as per my update - I can switch between Apple wallpapers (and they are beautiful and they take a while to load) and to individual photos from my Photos library but not to "Play photos from an Album". I can select it in settings and it loads the thumbnails in settings, but the desktop wallpaper remains on its previous setting. See image.
I haven't tried a folder, but I don't think it is a downloading issue. I run Photos on my iMac "unoptimised" so all photos are already on the iMac. Maybe Apple is so in love with the new wallpapers they assumed no-one would want to use their own photos and didn't test it!
My Sonoma wallpaper and screen saver do change. Each time I switch on my Mac Mini I get a different wallpaper on each display. This change seems to work if you use dynamic wallpapers for both the wallpaper and the screen saver.
However, the options for changing are limited to Continuously, Every 12 Hours, Every Day, Every 2 Days, Every Week, and Every Month. Not a great choice and it would be better if there were more options, for example, Every 10 Minutes, Every 30 Minutes, Every Hour, and so on up to Every 12 Hours.
In my opinion, Apple got the options wrong for wallpapers and screen savers.
Regards
Schof
KitzW wrote:
I solved it by putting the photos I want to use (about 150) in a folder on my Mac, not in the cloud files. Logged out and back in and voila!
That is not a solution, that is a work-around. A folder on your Mac with photos does work with the random feature in the Wallpaper settings panel. It still does not work if you want to randomize photos from an album in your Photos application. Doesn't matter if they are in the cloud or local on your Mac. It won't randomize or even display a photo if you choose the random option for an album in your Photos app. All you get is the Apple Vineyard wallpaper. Apple still needs to fix this.
Same exact problem here. It seemed to be better after a Safe Boot (and then back to a normal boot), It was working shuffling through an album every 1 minute. I changed to 5 minutes and it reverted to default again. More testing needed, but it's clearly broken.
Unable to change wallpaper on my Mac post Sonoma update
