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

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.

GGWP.

I cleared the problem by shutting down, waiting a few minutes, and restarting. I hope something just got scrambled and that straightened it out. Time will tell.

I found that after upgrading to 14.1 the problem is sort of fixed. Sometimes the wallpapers are there on startup, other times I have to swipe up to expose the spaces bar and select another space and then they come back.

In Terminal, run.. "killall Dock"

If that resolves your issue but it keeps recurring after sleeping, logging in or restart, set up this script..

My screen saver stared messing about in the way you've described only this morning.

I followed tbaoo's suggestion (Launchpad, Mission Control, add a desktop); then headed to Screen Saver, clicked Options, and (re-) selected Choose Folder for the pictures I want to view in Screen Saver (even though they were already selected). Just to be sure I changed the style (floating, etc) as well. This seems to work, according to the Preview at least.

I wish Apple would be more considerate; Wallpaper and Screen Saver are acutely personal settings for most.

Vexed of Vauxhall, London

Hi! I am a Macbook Air 2020 user with OS Sonoma 14.0. I added another desktop -> went to screen saver -> selected any random folder with pictures then clicked the folder originally used for my wallpapers, then it kinda solved the problem. I can access to the wallpaper and screen saver now. Hope this helps!

This is working much better for me now just changing from my 2.4GHZ Wifi to the 5GHZ Wifi. It should not have made that much of a difference so I'm guessing Apple is actively looking at what kind of network you are on and choosing to do things differently. Once I switched networks I was able to download individual wallpaper (like Palau coral reef) in just a few seconds. Before the switch the download stalled and was not making any progress at all.

Resetting vRam works until a restart then the problem returns! The latest update to 14.1 seems to have fixed it but I'm not going to power the thing off until I see some more comments saying its fixed...

14.1.1, 14.1.2 and now 14.2 and drum roll! The wall paper feature to enable a user to use their own photo’s does not work. In 14.2 you cannot even fool the system by choosing photo’s one by one from my self made wallpaper photo folder to create a small selection that did at least randomly switch every chosen time frame (this ‘fix’ worked in 14.1.2). So it has gone from bad to worse - no random use of any of my photos. And through all this the screen saver feature works - using the exact same process of randomly displaying photo’s from a self collated folder. So Apple what is going on? It is way passed time to fix this problem. I want to be able to use a random selection of my photo’s not the prepared one’s Apple provide.

Sonoma 14.1.1, 14.1.2 and now 14.2 and drum roll! The wall paper feature to enable a user to use their own photo’s does not work. In 14.2 you cannot even fool the system by choosing photo’s one by one from my self made wallpaper photo folder to create a small selection that did at least randomly switch every chosen time frame (this ‘fix’ worked in 14.1.2). So it has gone from bad to worse - no random use of any of my photos. And through all this the screen saver feature works - using the exact same process of randomly displaying photo’s from a self collated folder. So Apple what is going on? It is way passed  time to fix this problem. I want to be able to use a random selection of my photo’s not the prepared one’s Apple provide. It is very tiresome that Apple do not seem to be addressing this very basic of problems. This is not the slick or customer focused organization to whom I paid money to for what is portrayed as a premium product.

Feb 12 2024 Sonoma 14.3.1 (23DG0) upgrade just installed. And …… drum roll ….. the self choice of a folder of chosen images for a random changing use of those images as wallpaper still does not work! Screen saver use of a similar self prepared image folder works fine. This feature hasn’t worked since Sonoma was introduced. We have now gone through how many upgrades? And it still doesn’t work. Apple are you listening at all to your users?

No photos or images left in my wallpaper folder. Nothing ! I have a MacBook Pro 16 inch 2019, and using Sonoma 14.0. See below. I can't find the folder in my Library. My Screensaver now works as my wallpaper.

The only reliable way to have your own wallpaper with different pictures of your own is to create a folder within your files and link this to the wallpaper in settings. Creating your own wallpaper does not work if you link it to an album within Apple Photos, which is what it should do presumably!

Remember when we bought Apple computers because "they just worked"!?

I wish Apple would stop upgrading the operating system so frequently and just concentrate on fixing the existing one. Ventura had similar issues with Photos. And as for clicking on the desktop to make everything disappear; who thought that was a really useful feature that we all needed?

Tim

whumason wrote: whatever you set it to it will revert back to square 1 !!

if you set up the Automator Application Script above and set it to run as a login item, your wallpaper will be restored for your session.

Four iterations of Sonoma - most recent today 14.2.1 - drum roll! Apple still have not fixed the wallpaper feature!

The wall paper feature to enable a user to use their own photo’s does not work. Through all this the screen saver feature works - using the exact same process of randomly displaying photo’s from a self collated folder. So Apple what is going on? It is way past time to fix this problem. I want to be able to use a random selection of my photo’s not the prepared one’s Apple provide. It is very tiresome that Apple do not seem to be addressing this very basic of problems. This is not the slick or customer focused organization to whom I paid money to for what is portrayed as a premium product.