Wallpapers appearing upside down in macOS Tahoe 26.3

It's not ideal, and we should;dn't have to be finding solutions to this.

After updating macOS from Tahoe 26.2 → 26.3, the desktop wallpaper engine stopped respecting the EXIF Orientation tag in images. Previously, if an image had metadata saying “Rotate 180,” macOS would display it upright. Now, wallpapers show the raw pixel orientation, so images relying on the tag appear upside down.

Why some images behave differently:

• iPhones and cameras often store images with the orientation tag instead of rotating pixels.
• AirDropping or exporting images can create a mix of:
  • Horizontal (Normal) → pixels upright, no tag needed
  • Rotate 180 → pixels upside down, displayed upright only if EXIF is respected
• This inconsistency means some photos are fine and others appear inverted.

Solution (simplest approach):

1. Open images in Preview.
2. Rotate until the image looks correct on screen, normally is 360 degrees.
3. Save the images
4. 
   

• • This rotates the pixels and resets the EXIF Orientation to Horizontal (Normal); and it rests how the system reads it.

1. After this, the wallpaper will display correctly in all apps.

What I did, with an MacBook M4 Pro; took me a few minutes: (~350 photos)

1. Select all images in Finder.
2. Open with Preview.
3. In Preview’s sidebar, select all images (⌘A).
4. Rotate the images until they appear upright on screen (usually 360° if needed).
5. Save all.