Black screen is being displayed when I set a wallpaper on macOS Sonoma

Hi all, I found that opening launchpad, mission control, create a new desktop (use + sign on right hand side) and set wallpaper then works, with what ever you choose. You can then delete the first one that refuses to allow wallpaper changes if you want.

i spent a some time with apple care and they had me create a folder on my desktop that contained a copy of my favorite pictures. Then I went back into wallpaper and selected the "favorite pictures" folder. That worked for a couple of days then problem came back. I came up with a solution that now works and has been working for a week. It is tedious. Go to wallpaper in settings. Then pick the folder you want to shuffle through...in my case "favorites"...these are all the pictures I have marked with a "heart"...click on show all. This opens up all the pictures. Then (very important)...go to the end of the pictures and start clicking on the pictures you want to display one by one from back to front...bottom to top. When you get to the top and you are done selecting pictures...hit the first one that shows a gallery of pictures with two arrows in a circular fashion. This will allow you to set the timing (every 5 seconds) and randomly or not. Anyway, this is a hassle if you have 6000 favorite pictures you want to randomly use for the wallpaper...but now I see my pictures shuffling and it has been working for days. Make sure you pick the timing you want and don't change it. If you change the timing you will have to start all over again. Good luck!

EDIT: Thought this would reply into the one that worked for me. 1.) Find any photo 2.) Set it as Wallpaper 3.) Use "Change Wallpaper" to select whatever you want from there.

This solution worked for me. Just picked a picture as wallpaper and then I was able to adjust it through the Desktop settings after that. No more white, grey, black screen.

Thank you!

Nov 26, 2023 7:13 PM in response to 17Smithers71

i spent a some time with apple care and they had me create a folder on my desktop that contained a copy of my favorite pictures. Then I went back into wallpaper and selected the "favorite pictures" folder. That worked for a couple of days then problem came back. I came up with a solution that now works and has been working for a week. It is tedious. Go to wallpaper in settings. Then pick the folder you want to shuffle through...in my case "favorites"...these are all the pictures I have marked with a "heart"...click on show all. This opens up all the pictures. Then (very important)...go to the end of the pictures and start clicking on the pictures you want to display one by one from back to front...bottom to top. When you get to the top and you are done selecting pictures...hit the first one that shows a gallery of pictures with two arrows in a circular fashion. This will allow you to set the timing (every 5 seconds) and randomly or not. Anyway, this is a hassle if you have 6000 favorite pictures you want to randomly use for the wallpaper...but now I see my pictures shuffling and it has been working for days. Make sure you pick the timing you want and don't change it. If you change the timing you will have to start all over again. Good luck!

hi gauchowinemaker

indeed, I did this with my last holidays pictures (723!) AND IT WORKS!! unbelievable.

thank you for this most helpful hint in all these responses...

I finally switched from 5-sec to 1-min changing time and it still works.

btw I run my iMac 24" 2021 with sonoma 14.2.1

Reset Vram by, reseting ur computer and holding down,

Option+Command+P+R for 20 seconds.

17Smithers71 wrote:

I have an 2019 iMac 21.5 and installed OS Sonoma two days ago. I setup my wallpaper to randomly select photos from a personal folder and it worked for the first day. Now when I start up my machine, I only get a black screen. I tried switching to one of the Apple images, restarted and it still gives me a black screen. The lock screen is also black. The screen saver works using the same folder of photos. Has anyone had the same issue and been able to find a fix?

you can try a SafeBoot Use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

there has been some reports of issues here,

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

I had this problem too, and phoned Apple. They said to use Finder to locate the wallpaper you wish to use, right click on the wallpaper and the bottom option is 'Set Desktop Picture'. Choose that and hey presto, your wallpaper appears. Whether it will last........?

So I also had to make a separate folder for wallpapers and I moved that folder to documents. I then pulled the wallpaper from the document file. Seems strange but that’s what made it work. I also had the black screens. My desktop is only 3 weeks old so Apple needs to own this issue.

its a workaround but searching Wallpaper in Activity Monitor and quitting the one with the icon worked with me, i assume its a temporary fix so ill have to do this every time it breaks, you can also type killall WallpaperAgent in the terminal and hit enter, or create an app that runs this command with Automator

What I've noticed since the latest update is that the Wallpaper extension in System Settings tends to crash often and requires that you close System Settings and reopen it. Go back and select the wallpaper options again then click out of the wallpaper section.

I don't know what's causing the crash, but I also noticed that when I use images from any iCloud folder and those images/files are not downloaded to the drive, those images are skipped, and that sometimes causes a crash with the Wallpaper extension of System Settings when I attempt to select an image that isn't downloaded. So much for using images in the cloud.

Restarted in safe mode, ran first aid and problem went away. good luck

I updated to 14.1 and seems to have solved the wallpaper issue ....

Try running "kill dock all" at the command line in Terminal. THisshouldrestore you selected wallpaper.

If that works, set this up..

I solved this problem in a easy way——choose a picture on your mac--right click---set desktop picture, reopen wallpaper menu，you will find it's ok

Are you people even trying to read and follow?

I posted a solution on page two.

Here is the fix> Reset Vram by, reseting ur computer and holding down,

Option+Command+P+R for 20 seconds.

Hope that helps. It did for me.