Sonoma wall paper will not change

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?

Mac mini, macOS 14.0

Posted on Sep 26, 2023 6:27 PM

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Posted on Oct 27, 2023 3:35 PM

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.

  1. select chosen album.
  2. click on 'show all'
  3. click on individual photos which will now be your wallpaper.
  4. repeat step 3 as many times as you want with different photos within the album.
  5. now click the double arrow to select the album.
  6. Any photo from step 3 will now cycle.

I have over 4000 photos so I only click about 100. They cycle as it should.

Strangely, screen saver works properly.

85 replies

Oct 27, 2023 9:16 AM in response to rjp123

The work-around right now is to export the photos from the Photos Album that you want to use as Wallpaper, into a regular folder on your Mac. Then in the Wallpaper panel, choose that folder and you can randomize all the photos in that folder. So the bug is that it won't display all photos in an album in the Photos app, instead, you get the Apple Vineyard pic.

Dec 4, 2023 2:05 AM in response to rjp123

Previously, if you chose Preferences>Wallpaper and selected a desktop picture folder containing hundreds of images, the wallpaper would change sequentially every "X" minutes; when the computer was shut down and then restarted, the wallpaper would continue to change sequentially, starting from the last wallpaper displayed. However, after upgrading to Mac OS Sonoma, this no longer happens, i.e. each time the Mac is restarted, the wallpaper starts from the beginning without following the sequence, as if it were reset at each restart. Sounds like a system bug to me. Any suggestions?

Dec 19, 2023 4:55 PM in response to KitzW

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.

Jan 1, 2024 5:46 AM in response to rjp123

I tried the _click on the ones you want to shuffle, then click on the shuffle icon on the item below the folder's name__, and it appears to be working. The folder was constructed in Photos and downloaded to the desktop. The download worked, BUT it didn't place the downloads into a folder. I need to see what I did wrong there. There are only 35 photos so it was not a problem. I then told the wallpaper system setting to choose that folder, did the "click the shufflers" routine. I set it to cycle every minute, and it is. I will update you if something goes awry.

Sonoma wall paper will not change

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