Custom wallpaper color shows as white and unable to change after macOS 15.4 update on Mac mini

The only person I know of so far is BDAqua, who noted in the Lounge custom colors work for him. But it seems the bug is appearing for more users than not.

Edit: I just noticed the extended responses in the Lounge topic. I did see that BDAqua wrote iPad Air, but I assumed that was just a written mistake and he meant a MacBook Air.

This was a very avoidable error. That it managed to get out the door unnoticed is almost hard to believe. But I'd be very surprised if it isn't in whatever update is next. As minor as it is (in the grand scheme of things), it may be one of those times where Apple pulls the update, fixes things like this, then puts it out again as the same version number.

Even faster (if you're seeing what I saw in settings) - In Settings -> Wallpaper, the custom color I had selected was still showing up as selected, next to the white block showing what my nice custom color would look like on the real desktop 😂 Just command-shift-4 on that little custom color chip, holding down command to keep it square

The only advantage I can see to using the workaround (for me) is the ability to stash those color swatches on an iClod drive and have the exact same colors available on all my Macs. Given my vision, I really rely on that technique to help me know where I am in my various desktops.

Of course, I'm not sure why this was missed, unless everyone at Apple uses pictures for wallpaper.

You can create such a tiny file for this, it's just as easy to email it/them to the other Macs.

Of course, I'm not sure why this was missed, unless everyone at Apple uses pictures for wallpaper.

Apple will never say, but if anyone checked at all, they had to have only clicked on the 19 default colors, saw that they worked and declared it good.

So... I screen shot a color I wanted and uploaded it to the custom color window. It worked... once... now when I open OS my wallpaper is the Apple "forest" photo?!?!.. wassup with that... kinda funny. I guess weʻll have to wait for the "bug fix".

This is incredibly, deeply embarrassing and stupid. My eyes are sensitive to bright white so I minimize my exposure on many web browsers and often have very specific accessibility settings and accent/desktop colors chosen and spend the last few minutes figuring out why I could choose a specific dark gray color that's available by default but why I couldn't darken this via a slider in the color picker. LOL

I have the same bug, no idea how to fix it. I went to Displays > Color profile but all I see is HP27er (my monitor), which is in a drop-down menu with what I suppose are other displays listed. I don't see any colours, even Apple preset colours, in this menu. I can't read any of the document/file names on my monitor now and I'm desperate and non-techy). Please help!

Well, this just keeps getting more and more frustrating.

I held off on updating one of my Macs, but finally decided to yesterday. Thinking ahead, I put all the custom color swatches in my Pictures folder and changed all the backgrounds to use them instead of custom colors.

Except...

After the update, all the backgrounds were white. Even using the images. So, I changed them all again, and then shortly thereafter I had to reboot for another reason. While the login screen was the blue I'd expected, it was the much brighter blue of the old custom color. And, after logging in, all the backgrounds were white again. So, I once again set up my backgrounds with the custom color images. We shall see, but it's getting really annoying.

Meanwhile, the machine I originally responded to this post about, the M4 Mac Studio, reverted to the "temporary" custom colors instead of the color images I'd created. I had to go back and set them all up again.

If I had more time on my hands, I'd start digging into logs and file opening attempts to see if there's a plist file that's not being accessed correctly or something.

Here's hoping 15.4.1 will address this. For some, I know it's a minor issues, but if you rely on the background colors as some of us do, it's really a problem.

Seems to be, thanks. I just did a round of updates yesterday, haven't had time to check all the systems.

Of course, now I'm wondering which is more efficient; using a custom color image, or just selecting a color. Not that I imagine it really matters on today's machines. I just harken back to a time when every byte had meaning.

That is a good question. I do know image size matters. The larger the image, the more (though still minor) system resources have to be used for the wallpaper. For a flat tint, you can use just a 1 x 1 pixel image. But then what's more efficient for the system? A 1 x 1 image it has to tile to fill an (example) 2560 x 1440 screen? Or would a 16 x 16 pixel image use less resources to fill the same space?

While the animated wallpapers Apple includes are interesting, they also eat up a lot of RAM.

And those 19 default tints? Well, those are actually 128 x128 pixel PNG images themselves. Given the fact Apple uses a 128 x 128 pixel image, you can make an assumption this is the most efficient size.

So then I wondered, where do your custom tints go? Anywhere? I searched the entire drive, including hidden files and folders, and within packages, but couldn't find any PNG images the OS creates for your tints.

Thanks for the workaround.

How do I create that RGB image?

frankly speaking, it's quite annoying problem.

let's hope it will be solved soon

I agree. I have been using a custom wall paper for 10 years, now it isn’t available. I don t want a work a round just fix the broken issue.