Desktop Picture keeps resetting

Wish i could help you dude, I got the same problem and its really starting to annoy me, I talked with a guy that worked for geek-squad and he thought it might be a patch that apple would have to make, but I am not sure about that

Apparently this fix has worked for others. I was having the same problem, seemed to work for me.

i tried it and the wallpaper is still resetting :/

Just out of curiosity. The wallpaper image that keeps resetting, is that file located on an external drive?? Or are you using one of apples wallpapers provided with Mountain Lion??

Dude, I just don't know. I'm gonna keep toying with this, if i find a solution i will post it here.

Thats very similar to my problem.......I was using aperture and one of the pictures that i imported and edited I set as my wallpaper. After that I started having the "wallpaper resetting problem". Whats weird is that that picture that I set as my wallpaper was not even originally located on my computer but it still showed up as the wallpaper. Now the picture is saved on my computer. Even if I try to set a different picture say one from google I have tried saving it in the same folder as the picture I got from aperture, and it does not save it just resets.

My Solution was once change the displayed size from/to full screen and from then everything was ok.

I think I may have a fix for us all, I was searching for quite some time and found this page, ran the instrutctions myself and restarted my mac and also shut it down and turned it back on, both times the wallpaper stayed and DID NOT revert back....so far so good and no reverting back to the galaxy. Also once I found a picture that I wanted to set as my wallpaper I saved the picture to the "pictures folder", so that when you go to system preferences and click on wallpaper/screen saver the one folder thats named "pictures" will show that picture. Set the picture as your wallpaper from that screen. Sorry if this is kinda hard to make sense of, im not that savvy with all this technical stuff.

http://www.soyo123.com/2012/08/desktop-wallpaper-change-to-default.html

Macbook Pro Retina

2.6 GHz

8Gb

OSX 10.8.1

Hi all,

I have had this same issue with OS X Lion and it continued on to OS X Mountain Lion as well. I have had the wallpaper switching on me to the default solid blue color whenever I restarted (every month or so) and when switching between users (every other day or so). So this issue was very frustrating having to go back in and reset the wallpaper to my preference whenever I switched to either user. I found a solution that has been working for me for several restarts and several switching of users now:

First, I took some of your advice by locating all of my wallpapers into a 'Wallpaper' folder located in each user's 'Documents' directory. I copied to same wallpapers to each user so both user's have the same wallpapers to choose from.

Then, I installed the latest stable version of 'OnyX' (freeware software). I used OnyX on both user accounts to run through practically all the settings to clean up the entire Mac (Mac Mini, mid 2011) including: Verify [S.M.A.R.T. Status, Structure of volume, and Preferences], Maintenance [Permissions], Cleaning [System cache, User cache, Internet cache, Fonts cache, Log cache, Misc. cache]. I generally left the default checked boxes alone and didn't change any settings and Executed the program to run as default.

After running OnyX, I re-set my wallpapers for each user and went ahead and tested the restarting of the computer and switching back and forth between users. It was very easy to duplicate the bug previously, but now I could not get the wallpaper to switch back to the default blue as before. Everything seems stable with my wallpaper selection now.

Hope this helps someone. Thanks everyone for your input too.

As a side note, my Mac is running much smoother and quicker now too. =)

go to system prefrences and desktop and screen saver and change desktop background and how often it should change.

That's kinda the problem. No matter what some of us do, the setting on the Control Panel only lasts a day or two before it resets itself to another Desktop Image, cycling at whatever speed it baselines at.

I have a history of speaking too soon, and this might well prove to be just the latest instance of it. But I think I might have found a fix for this, or maybe two alternatives - i.e. two ways to avoid this resetting behaviour.

In sys prefs > Desktop & Screensaver > Desktop:

• in the location list at the left, select the folder 'Apple/Desktop Pictures'
• optionally set when to change the picture, and whether to make it random
• if desired, move, copy or alias images from other locations to this folder (/Library/Desktop Pictures);

OR - if you want to use a folder other than 'Library/Desktop Pictures'

• In Finder, go to folder '/Library/Desktop Pictures'

  rename file 'Galaxy.jpg'

  • I imagine you could name it anything except 'Galaxy'. I called it 'Not Galaxy'.
• In sys prefs > Desktop & Screensaver > Desktop:
  • in the location list at the left, select the folder of your choice
    • from those listed, or
    • by adding one from a location of your choice
  • optionally set when to change the picture, and whether to make it random

In summary: At least in my experience, either using the system default 'Desktop Pictures' folder or renaming the system default 'Galaxy' file will result in your choice of desktop picture(s) sticking.

HTH

I created a script to solve this and other related problems here:

http://applehelpwriter.com/2012/07/03/how-to-change-all-desktop-backgrounds/

(ToU Disclaimer: this links to a page which contains other links which promote my services as a technical writer)

Thanks, Phil. I'm semi-geeky, but not geeky enough to understand this stuff. By changing all desktop backgrounds, do you mean when using spaces? (I've never used that feature.)

More to the point, can you explain how your script addresses the issue here?

[As an aside, off topic: In my particular case I like to have the desktop change randomly at 15 minute intervals. I'd ideally like to have an alias of another folder in the 'Desktop Pictures' folder. But it seems the Desktop sys prefs limits the range of images to the top level of the selected folder. I might start another topic about that. Don't want to hijack this thread.]