Missing option for 'Your Photos' as custom wallpaper in MacOS Tahoe

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Level 1

131 points

Missing option for 'Your Photos' as custom wallpaper in MacOS Tahoe

Just updated to MacOS Tahoe, and after a reboot, my custom display wallpaper is gone--but my custom settings for screensaver remain correct (shuffle photos from a designated suitable-for-work-settings photo album)

I am trying to follow these instructions....

Customize the wallpaper on your Mac - Apple Support

Go to the System Settings app on your Mac.

Click Wallpaper in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)

Scroll down to Your Photos, click the Add Photo button, then do any of the following:

Add a photo from your Photos library: Click Choose from Photos, then select a photo.

BUT: 'Your Photos' does not appear and I have scrolled down as far as I can, past

Dynamic Wallpapers

Landscape

Cityscape

Underwater

Earth

Shuffle Aerials

Colors

And that's as far as I can scroll. I've also scrolled all the way to the right in each of the different options.

No 'Your Photos' or 'Custom' option appears anywhere.

What am I missing?

[Edited by Moderator]

MacBook Pro 16″

Posted on Sep 21, 2025 9:55 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 22, 2025 8:25 AM in response to Donot_Haveone

Same problem on all three of my Macs. If I log in as a different user on the machine, however, it appears.

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Answer 2

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 22, 2025 9:32 AM in response to thebaron98

does creating custom wallpaper for another user identity affect what I see as my primary administrator identity?

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Answer 3

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 22, 2025 9:51 AM in response to thebaron98

and I just put in a bug report to Apple now that I know it's not just me missing something obvious because if two of Us can't figure it out, it's a bug for everybody or a usability bug that we can't figure it out.

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Answer 4

Sep 22, 2025 10:10 AM in response to Donot_Haveone

It didn’t seem to impact the setting on my main user account. So, it seems as though it’s a local user setting which got disabled in the OS. I just don’t know how to enable it.

I’ve asked other people who upgraded, and they’re not having the problem. You and I are the only cases I’ve heard of so far.

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Answer 5

Sacha282

Level 1

8 points

Sep 22, 2025 2:18 PM in response to Donot_Haveone

the “your photo” section is right after the “dynamic wallpapers” for me, so the second line. My problem is that I can choose ONE picture and that’s it. Whereas before the update, I was using a Shared Album to shuffle through. And it is not the fact that it’s a shared album, because even choosing an album on my MacBook doesn’t work. It doesn’t open, as if I hadn’t clicked on anything. Anybody else?

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Answer 6

Sep 22, 2025 2:49 PM in response to Sacha282

Yeah it’s not there at all for me. I submitted a bug report to Apple.

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Answer 7

Sep 23, 2025 4:14 PM in response to Donot_Haveone

Just upgraded to Tahoe and hit the same issue. It is unbelievable that Apple could get such basic functionality messed up. What are the QAs doing?

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Answer 8

Sep 23, 2025 4:32 PM in response to Rainhaven

It’s not uncommon out of the gate. All we can do is post feedback to them through the feedback app, talk about it here and hope they see it.

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Answer 9

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 23, 2025 5:10 PM in response to Rainhaven

I already spent my first 30 minutes on the phone with Apple support this morning and got to the level of being transferred to a senior engineer but had to leave the call and go to work before I could work with anybody in further detail. But my first step Apple support person and I did verify that creating a new Test user account with administrator privileges made the option pop-up again for that user, but not for my primary user account.

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Answer 10

Old Toad

Level 10

217,860 points

Oct 18, 2025 1:50 PM in response to Donot_Haveone

By wallpaper you're referring to the Desktop picture, right?

If that's the case you're in the wrong settings pane. You want the Wallpaper settings pane where you can choose a folder on your boot drive or an album in your Photos library:

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 11

Sep 24, 2025 2:16 PM in response to Old Toad

This is macOS Sequoia, not macOS Tahoe.

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Answer 12

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 24, 2025 7:58 PM in response to Sacha282

For me, a test user did have the 'Your Photos' option. And once there, I could see that there are options to pick a FILE or a FOLDER when clicking the 'Your Photos' button. If I picked a folder, then I could use the left-most image (4 of my photos in one image with the 'dynamic' circular arrow over it) to pick random order and timing for screen changes. But as myself, no option to add photos.

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Answer 13

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 24, 2025 11:32 PM in response to Old Toad

No option to get to that view on my 2019 Intel MBP.

Senior advisor this AM could only suggest trying reinstall of OS from Recovery mode, or wipe the computer. Since I'm not the only one with this problem, I think it is very unlikely that a clean wipe is worth trying because this is going to take an OS update to fix--I'm not willing to put up with months of frustration as I keep finding more customizations I have to recreate and restore and remember how to fix when it won't fix the problem.

Next up will be engineers taking a peek under the hood.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 14

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 24, 2025 8:13 PM in response to thebaron98

Is yours also an Intel Mac? Just looking for commonalities.

I've got a 2019 MBP with an internal drive with two partitions, and the folder with the images I want on my desktop is on the partition with my primary user account.

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Answer 15

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Sep 24, 2025 8:16 PM in response to Rainhaven

Same question as above--is yours an Intel Mac?

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Missing option for 'Your Photos' as custom wallpaper in MacOS Tahoe

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