Desktop Wallpaper keeps going back to the standard wallpaper after reboot

Also this helped for me 🙂

If your wallpaper changes back to default (Galaxy) after reboot or after logout it is because

the wallpaper you set was on another drive.

and this drive loads after your settings are loaded.

MAC OS X Lion / Mountain Lion does not save your wallpaper on the native HDD, rather tries to load the wallpaper from the original HDD, i guess only the path to the wallpaper is saved in the OS X settings.

Anyways..

what happens is that when your OS X boots up it does not find the path to your wallpaper since the HDD you've saved your wallpapers in has not mounted yet. 😟

One basic solution for this is to save your wallpapers in the HDD where you've installed the MAC OS X..

but I didnt want to save all my wallpapers in Native Mountain Lion HDD, so i figured out my perfect fix..!!

This is how i fixed..

I found this file in my Lion install drive.. autodiskmount.plist

Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist

If you can't find it on your OS X Install Drive then you can make one by typing

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="0.9">

<dict>

<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key><true/>

</dict>

</plist>

rename ur txt file to autodiskmount.plist

save this in your MAC OS X HDD

Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plist

Voila..!!

restart your system..

Now save your wallpapers where ever you want on your computer and i didnt have to worry about the wallpaper changing back to default.

SORRY, I FORGOT TO ADD A STEP TO FIND THE "com.apple.desktop.plist"

~I'm running a base retina Macbook with Mountain Lion.~

I just got off the phone with Apple Support.

~~~On the Finder bar, click 'Go', hold 'alt/option', click Library.~~~

Now navigate to:

Library:Preferences , delete 'com.apple.desktop.plist'

Choose your desktop background; reset computer.

I have several desktops and have all of them set to randomly rotate desktop photos among my favorites. Like everyone else here, they kept reverting to the galaxy image. For me, this did not happen on restart like for some others but only during normal use. In fact, when I restarted they all set properly to one of my photos. I tried deleting the plist file and it did not work. But I finally found the solution. Someone suggested that the reason for reverting was that the desired photo could not load in time for whatever reason. My photos were high resolution and evidently they were too large. I exported copies of my favorite photos at a lower resolution and put these smaller files in a separate folder. This folder should be on your local drive rather than a shared/external/network drive for faster loading. This was over a week ago and even since then the dreaded galaxy image has been nowhere to be seen!

P.S. Most photo applications allow you to export to a specified resolution. My screen resolution width is 1920 pixels so I export my photos to 1920 pixels wide and they look great on my screen.

softwater thank you for your post, this just happend to me and your terminal command below worked perfectly for me.

Thank you

Apple please fix this.

=============================

Open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and paste this command

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Desktop.plist

I just got off the phone with Apple Support.

Go to... Library:Preferences , delete 'com.apple.desktop.plist'

Choose your desktop background; reset computer.

killall -HUP Dock reloads the Dock and wallpaper.

This isn't a solution, but a workaround:

a) Create a file called "killall_dock.sh" in your home directory, with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh

killall -HUP Dock

b) Save it.

c) Turn on execute permissions (run the command in Terminal.app)

chmod +x killall_dock.sh

d) Add the file killall_dock.sh as part of your Login Items from the System Preferences > Users & Groups preference pane.

Updated workaround. I have created an app to restart the Dock. Follow the instructions and download the app from http://saumilsmac.blogspot.in/2012/08/wallpaper-reverts-to-default-galaxy-at.htm l

Or for those who want a non-terminal fix: just add your pictures to Macintosh HD/Library/Desktop Pictures

Glad to have helped! 🙂

Like others, I'd had this difficulty & found the thread useful.

That said, I preferred to find the plist file manually, so I knew where I was deleting it from, rather than just typing something in. (Also would make sure I'd not do any typos!)

For those wondering, it was in the user's library folder, rather than the general library folder. There was also a 'lockfile' - which I assume was because it was running - I didn't bother to delete that & it worked fine.

Looking at earlier posts referring to which HD Mountain Lion and the image are both on, I'm guessing mine got confused as Mountain Lion is on the New computer & I used migration assistant to move all the files & software & settings etc. from an older machine (running Lion).

(My biggest problem was remembering which image folder my image was in!)

Ahmed's method seems to be the most full proof. However I wasn't able to make a .plist in textEdit so I had to use xCode to create a new plist and I just pasted

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="0.9">

<dict>

<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key><true/>

</dict>

</plist>

into the new .plist and set it as a data type. Then I moved it under Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ and restarted the computer. So far, all of my backgrounds (running on lion) have been saved.

Terminal is supposed to spit that back out, if you log out and then log back in, set the background then re-log out and log in, the background should save. I found that using terminal isn't as full-proof as Ahmed's method though because when you try to change your other wallpapers in lion (if you have multiple home screens) the desktop backgrounds will all reset if you log out and back in. So use Ahmed's method because that way you are saving the .plist and it will run every time you restart the computer or turn it on.

Same here, probably because you've got El Capitan, the later version of OS X. I found an easier solution though.

Go to Settings>Desktop and click the "+" sign on the bottom left corner of the window, then add the image you wish to have on your desktop into one of the folders available. Once done, just pick it from the list of images offered.

you sir! made my day, thanks alot 🙂