Sonoma Wallpapers and Screensaver Issues

Not a great solution, but this works, if you're willing to display your images outside of Photos.

I first tested to see if it was a problem with the number of images. I copied a couple hundred images to the Screen Savers folder in my user account and converted them all from TIFF (various RGB and CMYK images) to RGB JPEGs. I then kept duplicating them until I had 60,500 images.

The result is count is not the issue. No matter whether Shuffle was on or not, or using any of the effects (Floating, Origami, etc.) the screen saver worked as expected.

So, the temporary fix would be to export all of your images to the Screen Savers folder of your user account and display them from there. But, this will eat up space. Most of my images are only about half the size of the screen resolution, and even as JPEGs (best quality), they still take up 137 GB. But then, that's 60,500 of them.

I have a work around which isn't ideal but is working for me. I exported the Album I want as my wallpaper to a folder on my desktop (2000+ photos) and then I chose the folder. It's now cycling through all the photos for me.

As of 11/19/2023 Apple has NOT yet fixed the screen saver issue they broke in the OS Sonoma Release. Here are further details for Apple Tech Support when they get to the bug fix:

1. If you add an image from Photos as your wallpaper, you need to Shut Down and relaunch for the Drift screen saver to work.
2. The screen saver will ALSO disable if you perform ANY ACTIONS in your Photos folder. So again to get the screen saver to work, you will need to Shut Down and relaunch.

This morning I tried shuffling a photo album as wallpaper again, after updating to Sonoma 14.2.1 (23C71). It's not fixed, I still get the default Sonoma wallpaper stuck as a still shot instead of my album.

My workaround is to manually select individual photos periodically from the thumbnails at the bottom of the Wallpaper panel. I only select from the first few photos.

I'll file a bug report, for what it's worth.

CNiles3806 wrote:

The Aerial Wallpaper and Photos is nice and all, but Sonoma is turning out to be a complete mess when trying to use your own personal Photos library album. I have over 28,000 photos and I use them for my own wallpapers and screensaver settings.

However when I go into the Sonoma settings to select the album it simply does not work at all when I select my own album from the Photos library and try to randomize the image playback. Instead I continually get a default Sonoma photo set as my wallpaper and a black screen during screensaver, despite the fact I have selected my own albums from the Photos library. What an absolute mess, it's like Apple is trying to force you to use Aerials, even if you don't want to.

yes there appears to be some issue...

you can file a bug report /submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

Yes, same issue (30K+ photos) I would think that they would realize after exhorting us to take more pics with better cameras all these years that we would have thousands of them and would like to see them. Been in the ecosystem since MacSE in 1989, and I've culled plenty, there isn't digital cruft of 500 shots of my cat's nose, there's just 20+ years of digital photos, and many more pre-digital that got scanned

Same issue here and it's maddening! Over 24,000 pics that I can't cycle through anymore! Please fix this Apple!

Why can't I use my own photos for my screen saver? I always did until the last update to os Sonoma, now my mac imposes it's photos. I'm a me too or the reply

I totally agree that the efforts of Apple to resolve the problem are not only lacking they(Apple) appears to be ignoring the problem. Looking for outside help!