Unable to change wallpaper on my Mac post Sonoma update

I have the same problem. I have a 'Desktop Pictures' Album in my Photos app and I selected that. At first, it was changing photos, but only in order. I checked the Randomly box and now I am stuck with the Apple Vineyard. It won't display any photos when I have chosen the icon with the random arrows on it.

This worked for me. It won't pull from iPhotos, make a folder, export pics to that folder and use that.

Hello and thanks for your answer! Your solution is not simple as wallpaper must use photo library that is organised by photo app. Do I have to choose again from all folders that are stored in my Mac 15000 photos???

The problem seems to be Apple's Sonoma updates. When I first upgraded to Sonoma I had no problems with Wallpaper nor with my email primary selection address as the default choice to send emails. Now however, even though I have made that selection several times i still have had issues getting my laptop to use that default selection. Apple doesn't seem to care much about it's customer complaints on this community posting board. it is just a place for people to complain and vent apparently.

However I have had some results calling Apple support and showing the Apple support reps my problems and asking them to try and fix it. A few reps have been excellent and were able to fix an issue or two. Others simply read scripts on their own Apple Mac's and suggest fixes without really understanding the software.

Try this! https://twitter.com/mb/status/1708258499191283905?s=61&t=TtuM0B8vnVFhu3wGDXlcBA

Update, if I export a folder of (the same) images, and select folder instead of album, it works as expected. Clearly my gigabit internet connection is not fast enough and it times out without error.

Olde Skool beats cloud dependency once again

+1 here. Pics do not display as wallpaper, nor do the Sonoma OEM pics. Just a gray desktop. The Sonoma will works as screensaver but not wallpaper. This is a 2nd account. Mine works as expected.

and where did the sleep, shutdown, restart buttons go? Mia all users.

I was seeing this too, and found the issue: The photos I use are not in the Photos library, but in a couple of folders. These photos are my iCloud files area and so the system occasionally decide it's smarter than me and deletes the local version, keeping them online. I went to the directory in question and forced iCloud to download them all.

So Apple really needs to do two things:

1. Allow users to flag certain directories as "always available" as does all of the iCloud competitors.
2. Automatically download images is such directories.

I did not see this behavior prior to Sonoma.

I solved it by simply move my wallpaper folder from iCloud to my Pictures (local) folder.

Mine works. I have my photo's in a folder in Pictures called Desktop Backgrounds. I have the wallpaper app use that folder but I choose 15 minutes and use Random.

Can confirm it's still broken, and this works. Seems like it should be a pretty easy fix for Apple but at this rate maybe next OS it'll be fixed.

still broken with 14.5 as of today

was broken in Ventura too

Doesn’t appear to be a “preview” or a way to instantly look at how it is like you can with photos.

It’s a bit slow. You need to click the little arrow to download the ones you’d like to use. If you want them to move like Apple TV Aerial screensavers and match the wallpaper, go to screensavers and choose there. Also select “Use as Wallpaper”. Do this for Wallpaper as well and also select “use as screensaver” - if you’d like them to match. In Lock Screen (in Settings) you can set how long after inactivity you’d like the screensaver to start. They’re beautiful.

I used to have my wallpapers change every 5 minutes. With Sonoma, I have not yet found out how to have wallpapers auto-change every 5 minutes.

Does anybody have any ideas about auto-changing wallpaper, or has Apple made an error with Sonoma?

However, you can set Sonoma to display different wallpapers and screensavers on different monitors if there are multiple monitors connected. There is a drop-down list under the wallpaper sample picture at the top of the Wallpaper and Screen Saver options where you can select different monitors.

Regards

Schof

When I go to have one of my photos as wallpaper all that happens is I get a blue screen. In settings, it shows my photo as if it would be the wallpaper. and I click to show on all spaces, but it still just gives me a solid blue screen

Never ever had this problem with earleir OS versions.